Cultivating Awe
Keely Adler and
Cultivating Awe
Laura Francois, founder of the research collective Awe Exchange, who hosted a “Room of Awe” at our recent festival in Tangier, thinks that awe can mobilize and empower social action. She’s specifically interested in what might happen if eco-anxiety were replaced with eco-awe.
🏡 Shock and Awe
Children are made of awe. We have much to learn from them, but we seldom aim to. When we encounter the freedom of a child, we can choose to participate in their liberation or we can grow to resent the freedom in them.
Cole Arthur Riley • This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us
The Sense of Wonder
goodreads.com
Rachel Carson's best known book is Silent Spring, but this book (originally an essay) is a personal favorite. She maintained a deep conviction that wonder has to be at the foundation of our relationship with wider world. This book is a demonstration of that belief, and a celebration of the expansive potential of curiosity and wonder. Her writing is a great reminder that with enough attention, adults can develop the 'clear eyed vision' that comes naturally to children, but fades over time if not kept alive.
The tragedy is that as we distance ourselves from the delight of our youth, we become increasingly prone to disillusionment. Wonder and beauty are not precise cures for disillusionment, but they certainly can stave off the despair of it. To reclaim the awe of our child-selves, to allow ourselves to be taken by the beauty of a thing, allows goodness
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