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.
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.…
My wish for you is a homecoming in this life. A coming in out of the cold; a drying off the icy rain’s touch. In the holy reliquary of childhood memory may you find there the unshakable truth of your preciousness. May you remember the cool and padded graces of your wet feet against stone.…
In the place that is my own place, whose earth I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing, a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself. Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it, hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it. There…
Sunrise at the octagonal hut; beyond, where two decks meet, a lizard does pushups in the sun. I see the green, chattering world through the window, I see my image in the window. Both are present; are both true? A bee enters the hut, buzzes insistently against the window, but the window won’t yield to…