Every other sentence rivets me. Every other sentence, and this is only a slight exaggeration, pleads with my pencil/pen to underline it. Abram’s elegant descriptions and brilliant syntheses could inspire my responses for days, maybe weeks.

What is it about his thinking?

His thoughts ring true. They make my bones sing with, “Ahhhhhhh yes.”

Here’s an example from p 292 in Becoming Animal – An Earthly Cosmology: “ We re-create civilization by tapping the primordial wellspring of culture, replenishing the practice of wonder that lies at the indigenous heart of all culture.”

Those few words…replenishing the practice of wonder…make me smile…I’ve been championing wonder for a long time now. Closely aligned with ecstatic experience, wonder animates my core and makes me want to engage with living more fully. I want to move toward the next unknown in order to experience more of what can’t be explained. And then I notice my funny human propensity to want to share “wonder stories” – these stories which are often beyond words. What’s a gal to do? If I’m lucky, I can sing poetry, dance story, paint the gestalt, giggle and wiggle and cry- face to face with another. But sometimes words are essential, as in this electronic blog where I can string them together. But these words hold worlds, so please read in, around and beyond them. They only appear to be linear and hard edged.

Why do I love wonder? An encounter with mystery always helps my ego relax its stranglehold on my intelligence, that intelligence alive in my body which I used to disdain as not being rational. Irrational knowing and inexplicable events make me ask how I can be in charge of my life when I’m not in control of it? How can I manifest intentions when there is no straight line between cause and consequence? Something much vaster than I can comprehend contributes to all the twists and turnings of living fully engaged, embracing both dark and light since they can’t exist without each other.

Awe and wonder inspire humility. Humility empowers me. Like a rudder, humility keeps me on course when the rapids are wild.

“Replenishing the practice of wonder” is an everyday practice. Instead of dismissing intuitive events as being just coincidence, I marvel.

How did I know my daughter was calling when the phone rang? Because I’d thought of her a few seconds before the first ring.

Why did I think about getting a flat tire and then a few hours later it happened?

How did I know I was going to bump into Tania at the farmers’ market?

These everyday wonders serve to remind me I’m never alone. I’m actually surrounded by a network of invisible relations all the time, relations who/which communicate with me if I’m open to receiving – like the energetic waves activating this electronic media…Real as real as can be but I don’t see them, I can’t grab them with my hands, but the right receptor can.

More wondrous occasions affect my life in more dramatic ways. Those experiences birth a new me, seeding bone deep truths that reframe everything about me. As I think about stories to share with you, I find they relate to different faculties: physical, mystical, emotional, spiritual, mental. Come back to “hear” more.

And in the meantime, let me hear from you. What are your experiences of wonder and how do you replenish your practice?