I knew I had been hungry for blessing.*
John O’Donohue

Powerful moments of awe can help reconnect us to our values, remind us of what truly matters, and put our lives into a great cosmic perspective.**
Jonah Paquette

I know I can feed my hunger and desires with junk.

What I am really hungry for is awe and beauty:

Our deepest self-knowledge unfolds as we are embraced by Beauty.*

*From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**From Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck.

Wonder is the heaviest element on the periodic table. Even a tiny fleck of it stops time.*
Diane Ackerman

To get a different output, sometimes you need a different input.**
Rohit Bhargava

It seems we may have underestimated the value and effects of awe.

We’re now researching why and how awe is a part of being human.

It turns out that just a few minutes of contemplating something awe-inspiring appears to have benefit in three ways:

Among the different ideas that have been proposed, three explanations stand out today: awe strengthens our social bonds, makes us kinder and more generous to others, and fosters a sense of curiosity about our world.^

Maybe this is worth a little experiment, adding a little awe with our cereal in the morning for a more inspiring start to the day?

*Diane Ackerman, quoted in Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck;
**From Rohit Bhargava’s Non Obvious 2019;
^From Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck.

awe truly is all around is, if only we take the time to look*
Jonah Paquette

Most of us then default to one of a handful of temples and filters for all their experiences; everything gets pulled inside what my little mind already agrees with.**
Richard Rohr

I sense there exists a critical link between awe and integrity.

If I open myself to and connect myself with the larger world around me and beyond, and do the same with others, and give my true self more attention too, I give myself a chance of growing connectedness: that is, the larger perspective of integrity, out of which I I’ve myself the chance of making better choices, as Richard Rohr points out:

the opposite of contemplation is not action – it is reaction^.

*From Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck;
**From Richard Rohr’s The Divine Dance;
^From Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond.

a key effect of awe is that we feel a sense of connection to other people and to something larger than ourselves … awe … diminishes the ego, and links us to the greater forces that surround us in the world and the larger universe*
Jonah Paquette

Much of our life we are trying to connect the dots, to pierce the heart of reality to see what is good true, and beautiful for us. We want something lasting and transcendent.**
Richard Rohr

I said to Christine on our trip around the northwest of Scotland that I simply couldn’t take another beautiful view, another surprise around the next corner.

Nature, stories, ideas, people’s imagination and creativity are all possible sources of wonder.

Not only are we recipients of awe, we are also able to make it happen for each other: awe is an exceptional human gift.

Something magical happens right where we are when we connect our sense to our heart: to see, to hear, to touch, to taste, to smell. We don’t even have to travel great distances and pay out large amounts of money, so it just gets better and better. I’ll leave the final words for Jonah Paquette:

awe spurs us to be kinder and more compassionate. It makes us happier, healthier, and less concerned with materialism. Experiences of awe spark curiosity within us ad help orient us to what matters i our lives. In short, awe changes us in the most incredible ways.

May our new year adventure begin.

*From Jonah Paquette’s Awestruck;
**From Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond.

won’t you celebrate with me
what I have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model
…
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay*
Lucille Clifton

I am grateful for this invisible line drawn between one span of time and another of similar length: 31 December|1 January.

If I desire, it will mark a great difference between what is past and what can be.

Today then becomes my preparation: to buy the book to read, or the journal to write in, or sketchpad to draw in, or some other equivalence: to set these out in the space or time when I will come to them and then, begin.

Lucille Clifton‘s won’t you celebrate with me, from Maria Popova’s Figuring.

My top 5 reads of 2021:
The Practice by Seth Godin
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens;
Personality Isn’t Permanent by Ben Hardy;
Range by David Epstein;
The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck.

The ego is you as you think of yourself. You in relation to all the commitments of your life, as you understand them. The self is the whole range of possibilities that you’ve never even thought of. And you’re stuck with your past when you are stuck with your ego.*
Joseph Campbell

Some look backwards for the answers, though I more and more suspect they are to be found by looking forwards.

Eckhart Tolle warns that with the ego comes the painbody: the part of us wanting to feel the wrongs inflicted upon us by people and circumstances, so proving we were right all along.

The True Self is open to the future that shows nothing needs to change to be our fullest self.

*From Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey.

Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honour and recognition in case of success.*
Ernest Shackleton

There is in each of us the desire for adventure.

We’re nothing if not inventive as we seek to satisfy this through different ways and means but the fire will not be assuaged by anything less than the venture we are here for.

Sometimes it all begins to emerge when we go slow, alone and silent:

In that special silence, you get a strong sense of something that wants to happen that you wouldn’t be aware of otherwise.**

*Ernest Shackleton, quoted in Maria Popova’s Figuring: the advert may not have existed;
**Joseph Jaworski from Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers’ Presence.

The future is not a destination. It’s a direction.*
Ed Catmull

Life is an expression of bliss.**
Joseph Campbell

In her book about learning from nature, Janine Benyus offers four steps for living in tune with and learning from nature which also provide a way of journeying towards the futures: quietening, listening, mimicking, stewarding.

Quietening is to come aside from the rush and noise of life, often alone.

Listening is to be open to the whisperings that come to us in our quietness: whether it be a walk or some reflective exercise, reading, journaling, doodling or other art.

Mimicking as in giving expression to what is presenting in whispers.

Stewards as both preserving and developing these expressions.

Forty five years after Joseph Campbell identified our need for myths if we are to live fully and meaningfully, and following a winter visit to the Artic Circle, Katherine May experiences this for herself, reflecting:

Few of us inherit the rich and complex mythologies that the Sami pass on – the sense of the world alive around us, and of ancestors keeping a gentle watch in the very rocks we stand one, the very wind that buffets us. Most of us have to make our own, if we think to do it at all.^

These mythologies, or stories, offer ways for containing our quietening, listening, mimicking and stewarding, Robert Bly offers a place to begin, picking a myth and seeking to live it out:

the student would choose one myth that attracted him and then spend time in college seeing how far he lived it and how the myth lived him.^^

Have fun.

*From Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc.;
**From Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey;
^From Katherine May’s Wintering;
^^Robert Bly, from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey.

I listened while the land spoke, and then I tried to mimic what I heard.*
Janine Benyus

One of the problems with being separated from the seasons is we have lost sight of how all things can be made new. And we all need this newness, the possibility of starting over.

god believes in it: it’s we that have to be convinced.

[O]ne young lady came to me and said, “Oh, Mr Campbell, you just don’t know about the modern generation. We go straight from infancy to wisdom.” I said, “That’s great. All you’ve missed is life.””**

*From Janine Benyus’ Biomimicry;
**From Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey.

Here’s the doodle for colouring. I’ve mentioned that the final doodle I posted yesterday took me some four hours for the A4 sized original.

You can just colour it when you want to lose yourself and relax in colouring.