“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”
-Robin Wall Kimmerer
I have been witnessing. I have been attuned. I have been immersed in wonder and awe. Not every moment, every hour, but more and more and more. There are big forces out there responding in ways that are incalculable and hard to articulate. They are listening. They have been waiting. It is beautiful. It is interactive. I am learning each day to stay awake, as Rumi says, “don’t go back to sleep!”
Oh this life has so much inner expansion lying dormant for us to touch. Magnificent. Awe inspiring, wonder evoking…. These philosophers, poets and scientists words express this awe and wonder much better than I ever could, but I’m seeing it, feeling it, living it from my home to Chief Mountain – all sacred:
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
―
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”
―“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
―
Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
―“The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.”
―“The obligation falls upon us to foster in ourselves the sensibilities that modernity has suppressed or even denigrated. … Without awe, our lives are impoverished, our society decays.”
―“Awe, you see, is what moves us forward.”
―“I suspect that it was simply that I had admired the earth, and the universe. The more I say and think that I admire it, and love it, the more it gives me what I admire, or strange coincidences that leave me in more awe than I was before.”
―
“We were not meant to live shallow lives, pocked by meaningless routines and the secondary satisfactions of happy hour. We are the inheritors of an amazing lineage, rippling with memories of life lived intimately with bison and gazelle, raven and the night sky.We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder, not resignation and endurance. This is at the very heart of our grief and sorrow.The dream of full-throated living, woven into our very being, has often been forgotten and neglected, replaced by a societal fiction of productivity and material gain. No wonder we seek distractions.Every sorrow we carry extends from the absence of what we require to stay engaged in this “one wild and precious life”.-Francis Weller
Thank you Stephen Hawking for never giving up. It did matter and we won’t forget. We’ll continue to try to unravel your brilliance…
“So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes a universe exist.
Be curious.
And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t give up.”
-Stephen Hawking
As 2017 comes to a close at midnight, my heart is full with memories. I know more with each passing day that the sweetness is in awareness. Awareness of all of the magic, majesty and wonder all around, in every single second. In the trees, the wild ones, the big night sky, the wind, every snow flake, the fragrance of pine, my dog’s intent gaze, the eyes of a stranger, the touch of my beloved… The moments of wonder stitch together in a tapestry of hours, days, weeks, and thus this year was made. Moments of awareness, of being here now, slowly weave together our lives. There is so very much to treasure, absorb, experience, and be with. How beautiful.
It leaves me breathless for all that 2018 may bring… It is a precious thing to be alive in this world.
So…goodbye 2017 and thank you!
And to 2018, sending heartfelt wishes for all of us to write on our hearts, pause in the silence of the forest, visit the area of the soul where words don’t penetrate, be peaceful and wild, and Love, Love, Love, in the wondrous moments that will create our new year!
“Write it on your heart… that every day is the best day of the year.”
-R. W. Emerson
“Pausing to experience the silence of the forest during winter months is a gift of presence.”
-Andrea Fereshteh
“Some events are in the area of the soul where words cannot penetrate.”
-Neil Cassady
“There is peaceful. There is wild. I am both at the same time.”
-Nayyirah Waheed
“What is done in love is done well.”
-Vincent Van Gogh
Wandering and wondering. Two compelling ways of spending some good quality time.
Some sweet breathing time. Some simple pleasures time. Some deepening into all of who you are time.
Go out with nothing more to do than to be present with wonder, and wander freely, with open heart and mind. Sustaining and fulfilling this wandering and wondering…
“All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.”
-J.R.R. Tolkien
Wakefulness this new morning brought a deep feeling of wonder and mystery…
Beautiful sense of being immersed.
Sun streaming through the windows.
Warmth of knowing and not knowing.
There will be many wonders and mysteries today!
“It is the dim haze of mystery that adds enchantment to pursuit.”
-Antoine Rivarol
“The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
-Anais Nin
“We have to be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.”
-Paulo Coelho
“I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.”
-Harry Emerson Fosdick
“As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.”
-A. C. Benson
“No sight is more provocative of awe than is the night sky.”
-Llewelyn Powys
“A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders.”
-Edward Plunkett
