Hello everyone and happy (almost) Spring!
The next book we’ve chosen to read is Enchantment by Katherine May. I stumbled upon this book while I was out on a little date with myself. I took the bus to a part of Toronto I don’t normally frequent and tried a new little cafe. While I was in the area I decided to check out the local bookstore where I found Katherine Mays recently published book on Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age and thought to myself “how fitting”. A strange time isn’t it? Trying to find meaning in all the chaos. Trying to reconcile the dichotomy of self-care with the ever looming capitalist agenda. Wanting to come home to ourselves, slow down, rest, and find joy in the nooks and crannies of our lives while simultaneously feeling tethered to expectations and responsibilities. Katherine May explains it well, “a grind of constant change: rolling news cycles, the chatter of social media, our families split along partisan lines. We feel fearful and tired, on edge in our bodies, not quite knowing what has us perpetually depleted”. How do we navigate and find balance between it all?
I thought this book might be an interesting read for those, myself included, trying to do exactly what the cover says, “awakening wonder in an anxious age”. Have you thought about what awakening wonder in your life might look like? I’ve been trying to come back to the present and pay closer attention to the world around me, which can prove challenging at times! Hopefully Katherine May has some insight on all this.
So grab your copy, get reading, and stay tuned for more info!
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
All the best for now,
Taima
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Reflections:
Enchantment! What a lovely read. The pure act of sitting down and taking time to read this book felt like a hierophany in itself. I’ve found it difficult to create the time and space to sit down and read lately; almost feeling guilty when doing so because there are so many other things that constantly need to get done. It can be hard to appreciate the enchantment occurring all around us all the time when we’re constantly on the move, urgently checking off our to-dos. But as reading this book became an urgent “to do” itself, I found myself easing into the pages, appreciating the quiet comfort that each word had to offer, allowing me to explore these themes further in my day-to-day life. And themes were there many! From slowing down and being present, to exploring playful practices, Katherine May covered all the topics we often forget are crucial for showing up for ourselves, first and foremost.
Before exploring these themes I’d like to preface that while Katherine May explores a lot of these concepts through a religious lens, particularly referring to “God”, I like to think that God can be interchangeably used with any other term like “universe”, “spirit”, “force”, “deity”, or any other term that resonates. These themes also don’t have to be explored through a spiritual or religious lens at all, and I personally will not be taking a religious stance in the following reflection or in our next online meeting. If you are religious and would like to explore any of these themes through that lens, by all means. We just ask that comments left on the blog and that are made in our meeting are respectful of all views. Discrimination of any kind will not be tolerated.
On this note, I really like how Katherine May, on page 99, spoke about cherry picking particular aspects of religion. Taking what feels good and leaving the rest, when there's so much more to these rich and historic religions and traditions that must be taken into consideration as well. We all have work to do, we all have to hold ourselves accountable and think about our perceptions and our behaviors, whether this is through the lens of religion, colonialism, capitalism, etc. We all have prejudices and beliefs that we are responsible for exploring and dismantling.
Hierophany. I really liked reading about this concept as I try to look for them on the daily but didn’t have a name for them up until this point. Hierophanies are everywhere. They’re the morning sun shining in and lighting up your home. It's the smell of coffee. It's smiling at strangers. It's crawling into your warm bed after a long day. It’s hanging photos around your home. It's the first bite of a really good meal. It’s laughter with friends. It’s putting the kettle on because you know your coworker will want tea when they get in. It's love. It’s gratitude. It’s warmth. And it exists all around us at all times, we just have to pay attention. And in the world that we’re living in, paying attention can be hard to do when it feels as though everywhere we look is clouded in destruction and chaos. But within that darkness is light. And the more we pay attention to the light, the darkness seems to fade. It's like the saying, “where attention goes, energy flows” and I like to think that the more I pay attention to the things that are going right, the less that goes wrong. Perhaps not for everyone, but I hope that reading this chapter at least offered a glimmer of hope and the possibility of experiencing hierophany where it might not have otherwise been found.
I really loved the way that May discussed learning throughout the book. Unlearning is just as important as learning and on page 65 she explains, “If I want to swim better, I need to know nothing - be nothing - for a while. I need to put myself into somebody else’s hands and allow them to reform me. I need to let go of the part of me that knows better, the part of me that thinks I'm doing it right, the part of me that wants everyone else to believe I’m perfect. I’m not learning so much as unlearning.” In order to become good at something we have to let go of everything we already know. We have to be willing to open up to the idea that we might not know everything there is to know about something. We have to accept that it’s okay to not know everything. How could we? The important thing is that we’re trying, we’re showing up, we’re putting in effort, and we’re learning something new. What's important is that we create the space to allow ourselves to do that, knowing that we might not get it right the first time, or the second, or even the third, but that we’re trying. We’re opening ourselves up to the possibility, and the vulnerability, of being wrong, and of challenging our beliefs, which we might think form our identity, but are really just new ways of perceiving and showing up in the world. Katherine May continues on page 66 saying, “My learning is like the swing of a pendulum, lurching from one extreme to the other, but gradually it begins to stabilize.” Learning can be tough. But it isn’t so much what we learn but how we learn and our willingness to learn that's important. Which I think is kind of like therapy too. A lot gets uncovered in therapy that we might not have even realized was there which might make us feel like therapy isn’t working because all of a sudden we have all these new issues to work through. But we have to bring it all up to the surface before we can start unpacking it. And with time and deeper understanding, like a pendulum, the issues causing chaos in our lives begin to stabilize. With this is also the importance of sitting still and bearing witness. “The act of witnessing changed a topic I thought I already knew” (May, 103). Forcing ourselves to sit with uncomfortable topics and emotions allows us to listen more closely, learning and unlearning more about topics we might have thought we already knew all about, which in my opinion is another hierophany in itself.
The other concept I really loved was the concept of play. As Katherine May puts it, “Play is the complete absorption in something that doesn’t matter to the external world, but which matters completely to you. It’s an immersion in your own interests that becomes a feeling in itself, a potent emotion. Play is a disappearance into a space of our choosing, invisible to those outside the game. It is the pursuit of pure flow, a sandbox mind in which we can test new thoughts, new selves. It’s a form of symbolic living, a way to transpose one reality onto another and mine it for meaning. Play is a form of enchantment.” I don’t think we incorporate play enough into our lives, yet I think it’s crucial for our well being. Whether it's dancing or cooking or making art, diving deeply into something we’re passionate about and having fun with it can restore life, excitement, and an overall sense of greater fulfillment. It can be hard sometimes to incorporate play into our lives, especially when it’s frowned upon or considered childish. But that's kind of why I love this concept. We all have some inner child healing to do and I think this is where it begins. Embracing those parts of ourselves where we feel a little insecure, fearful or anxious and allowing them the space to exist freely without judgment. Sometimes I find it hard to make art because I’m afraid it won’t be good enough or that people won’t like it. But that's where I can find compassion for myself and my artistic practice, allowing myself the space to create freely, even if it makes me anxious or insecure. I think there are many ways of interpreting the following quote which goes, “Deep play is a labyrinth and not a maze, a twisting path with no destination. The walking is the thing. You are the walk. There is no end to it. Your only reward is more of the same - more wells to fill with your attention, more fires to tend. And every now and then, for reasons beyond your control, those fires will go out.” (May, 144). The way that I like to interpret it is that as you tend to those fires within you, whether they are the playful practice you’d like to incorporate into your life, or the fear you feel around it, the fire that exists will go out not because you’ve lost the desire to play but because it becomes a natural part of your life that no longer feels so glaring.
I hope you enjoyed this read as much as I did. We would love to hear your thoughts! We’ll discuss these themes and much more at our next meeting on Tuesday, May 9th at 6pm. If you’re interested in joining, sign up for our book club newsletter at the link above for updates and zoom links.
All my best,
Taima
Reflection Prompts:
- What are some hierophanies you’ve noticed in your daily life?
- Have you tried sitting still and bearing witness? How did it feel? Did any emotions come up? Were you able to create space for those emotions?
- How do you incorporate play into your life?
- What are small practices that help you come back to the present?
- What are ways in which you indulge your senses? Do you like listening to music? Or lighting a candle?