The True Wonder of This World…

Maria Popova introduced me to Maya Angelou’s magnificent poem, A Brave and Startling Truth, in her inspiring book, The Universe in Verse.

While all the essays paired with a poem are invitations to wonder and awe, I’ve been especially moved by her story of NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, the images they sent back, and Carl Sagan’s insistence that a precious photo be taken of the Voyager looking back at earth (the Pale Blue Dot) rather than at other planets.

Reflecting on Sagan’s speech about the Voyager’s discoveries that so captured the imagination, especially his reference to the Earth as a “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” Maria Popova goes on to link this story to Maya Angelou’s poem:

Still resonating within me weeks after reading both the essay and the poem, I feel the power they both share for reaching our highest potential. Reading about the “muck” of politics and more in the world today, this perspective is a much-appreciated antidote to despair and call to continue to point our focus on humanity’s highest potential instead of reading about its lower actions.

Whether pulling back and widening your gaze to include the stars and planet earth or reading about the inspiring stories of divinity within and hope without, you’re invited to let the wonders within you and without this world be your north star today, guiding you to what is yours to do to be part of a better future.

May your attention be captured today by the wonder and potential of the world around you, including the amazing human beings you come in contact with today (including yourself). And may you be blessed by this awareness.

Rise Up…

“If you could envision the type of person God intended you to be, you would rise up and never be the same again.”

—Sean Covey

Loving What You See

“And though he tried to look properly severe for his students, Fletcher Seagull suddenly saw them all as they really were, just for a moment, and he more than liked, he loved what it was he saw.”

―Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

When we come to it

Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

―Maya Angelou