Poems can be a doorway into another world. Each one, a simple arrangement of otherwise ordinary words, that together evoke presence, wonder, possibility. So here is an invitation to pause, let the words wash over you and glimpse the world they offer you…
It’s a growing collection, and we’d love to hear which ones resonate with you and why, and find out about your favourites. Here is an index of our Words of Wonder.
You and I have spoken all these words, but as for the way we have to go, words are no preparation. There is no getting ready, other than grace…. Inside each of us, there’s continual autumn. Our leaves fall and are blown out over the water. A crow sits in the blackened limbs and talks…
Wonder, Who has the magic to make the sun appear every morning? Who makes that bird on the elegant tree chirp? Breath, pulse, music, dew, sunset, the burning ambers of the fall. There is unfathomable joy in all that. Life is a stream. It flows on its own. No one knows why we are…
It’s like the scent of rain after a month of drought, the way it rises up and fills the lungs, quiets the body and gentles the mind – that’s what it’s like when, after grasping and spinning and reaching and clenching at last, exhausted with my own fear, I lay my hand on my own…
No, today probably won’t be a great day, but it absolutely won’t be a bad day either. Today will simply be a day. Twenty-four hours of a little bit of everything. Some moments will be hard, some will be joyous, some will be peaceful and some will be draining. And you, you will handle it…
Ah, not to be cut off, not through the slightest partition shut out from the law of the stars. The inner – what is it? if not the intensified sky, hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming. by Rainer Maria Rilke As with most of Austrian Rainer Maria Rilke’s writings,…
Sometime between mindlessly loading the dishwasher and wiping the crumb-covered countertops, I make my way back— to the hickory floor beneath tired feet, to the smell of sautéing garlic and onions, to the soothing sound of end-of-summer showers. Another season, another day, slowing slipping away. I close my eyes and listen to the song that…
Come new to this day. Remove the rigid overcoat of experience, the notion of knowing, the beliefs that cloud your vision. Leave behind the stories of your life. Spit out the sour taste of unmet expectation. Let the stale scent of what-ifs waft back into the swamp of your useless fears. Arrive curious, without the…
Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark After lunch she distributed worksheets that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s voice. Then the…
What is this meditation, then? Pure fascination with this moment, exactly as it is. Allowing everything to be. Drenching one’s present experience in curiosity. Not adding anything. Not taking anything away. No goal. No seeking. No agenda. No special state to attain. No special experience to have. Pure wonder. The extraordinary ordinariness of what is.…