This is the bi-weekly-ish newsletter version of Sara by the Season, where I explore a little bit of everything that’s on my mind as I try to lean into nature’s wisdom and rhythms. You can listen to me read you the newsletter by hitting play above - or you can click the little link above and to the right to play in your favorite podcast player. If you know someone who would like this sort of thing, I’d be so grateful if you would share it!
I listened to John O’Donohue’s Walking in Wonder this week. It’s beautiful, as anyone who has read any O’Donohue would expect. As you can deduce by the title, O’Donohue spends most of the book talking and thinking about wonder. This bit especially stuck with me:
Imagination according to William Blake is about the awakening to and recognition of the sacredness of all the difference that there is. Where the imagination is alive, wonder is completely alive. Where the imagination is alive, possibility is awake because imagination is the great friend of possibility. Possibilities are always more interesting than their facts.
I also just finished John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed. Last night, I underlined this and wrote “O’Donohue!” in the margin:
Marveling at the perfection of that leaf, I was reminded that aesthetic beauty is as much about how and whether you look as what you see. From the quark to the supernova, the wonders do not cease. It is our attentiveness that is in short supply, our ability and willingness to do the work that awe requires. Still, I’m fond of our capacity for wonder…Here’s the plain truth, at least as it has been shown to me: We are never far from wonders.
As I’ve been trying to lean into the falling back of autumn, I’ve been trying to stay curious about what is in front of me. I’ve been attempting to “pay attention to what I pay attention to,” as Amy Krouse Rosenthal suggests.
I’m curious if part of my continued angst is that I’ve been living in the facts space instead of the possibilities space. I’ve been dealing with what is instead of imagining what could be. I haven’t been prioritizing the work “that awe requires” because, let’s be honest, angst is easier work than awe and more rewarded (in the short-term at least), especially with the supercomputers we carry around like appendages whose creators work tirelessly to find new ways to vacuum up all of our attention.
There is so much to be angry about, of course, if you’re paying attention. But as Green, says, there’s also wonder lurking around every corner. Later in Walking with Wonder, O’Donohue recommends that we “take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.” There is something about the stuff that is quietly doing its thing that sucks me in these days. Perhaps it’s because we’re surrounded by and participating in so much attention-seeking all day long, but I’m thirsty to pay attention to the things that could care less if anyone is there to notice them - like the birds I noticed when I took Wendell out this morning that seemed to swoop around in swirly loops for the pure joy of it.
This is obviously not an original thought - there is even new scientific research about the benefits of awe and wonder. But, as I struggle with the general dis-ease pervading pretty much all sectors of our lives at the moment, I’m ready to try something different. If I am to take my own evangelizing about how there’s a season to everything to heart, perhaps this next season is a season to tune into wonder as if I could find its frequency on the radio, to walk with it, to notice how it’s operating quietly, without fanfare all around me.
In the introduction of The Anthropocene Reviewed, Green says that, despite all of the tragedy, trauma, and general crummy ways in which we treat one another and creation, he wants “to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.”
Me too.
Raves only this week
👍 I read this for a Seminary of the Wild assignment last week. I loved it, but it also made me grieve all the alternate possibilities that were available to us prior to Christianity getting in bed with empire back 1500 years ago or so.
👍 This was such a fun read. I wish I would have saved it for a beach vacation, so do yourself a favor and bring it along for your next one.
👍 Staycations but where you do nothing. Last week was our fall break, and because we have another trip planned in November, we decided to stay home. I took the week off work, but Grant couldn’t. I had planned fun things for the kids and I to do, but instead we mostly stayed home, read books, slept in, and watched too much TV. It was glorious.
Stuff worth sharing this week
This from Chris LaTray was so good. And if you’re looking for a way to tune into wonder, read through the comments about how people answered Chris’ question about where they’re “finding sweetness” these days.
I really loved this #3 from Deep Fix, and I keep thinking about it. Which led me to this, which you should read if you’re in need of feeling some things.
Anne Helen doing what she does best: naming what’s ailing us. Read the whole thing about what she calls the fall regression, but I especially loved this comment:
I just described myself to a friend this way: "You might want to take everything I say with not a grain but a whole sea of salt because it is Fall, which is, for me, the slow descent into a bleak winter. It's my hard season." I feel like my skin is see-through, and everything gets under it because I am that sensitive. And yes, I am wearing a sweater, and it's nice to wear a sweater and mostly athleisure, but I know that the line is so thin between this luxurious laziness and feeling like I just give up on everything. Because even the daylight is giving up. Also, I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way, but it seems even harder because I KNOW this season is coming. It happens every year, and yet, I am ALWAYS surprised by how it affects me. The surprise is a real one-two punch.
I actually love the descent into fall, AND I still totally get what this commenter says so beautifully.
Seasonal view of the week
Pretty much how I spent all of fall break…
Cheers to tuning into wonder in the week ahead!
Sara
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