This Antidote is Accessible at Anytime…
“The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.” —Henry Miller
Preparing to record a monthly video for my friend’s online community last week, I rediscovered the wisdom of Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poetry and writing, specifically in her book, The Unfolding.
Sharing with the viewers her poem Smack Dab in the Middle of a Thursday (see below), the invitation in the poem to honor the wonder of even simple pleasures like lying in the warmth of the sun on a winter day stayed with me.
Her poetry reminded me of the power to transform worry, fear, depression, or despair through the gift of radical amazement or attending to what we’ve been lulled into taking for granted.
“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement… get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel
After sharing in the Prelude in The Unfolding that the poems were all written after 2021, the year both her son “chose to take his life” and her father died, Trommer closes with an invitation to say Yes to the world as it is, an invitation that only someone whose heart has been broken wide open can authentically offer and call us to:
“Almost three years later [after the losses in 2021], that invitation to say Yes to the world as it is inspires every poem in this collection: The call to accept our vulnerability. To be curious. To open ourselves to love. To dwell more fully in the body. To feel how ephemeral all our epiphanies are. To live into the blank pages of our lives where new poems wait to be written. To praise what is. To be in service to the continual unfolding that is the nature of, well, everything.” ― Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Wow! I can’t think of a greater invitation in this month of February 2026, where we try to focus on love while the world as we’ve known it is unraveling before our eyes. I hope you’ll join me in saying Yes to what is and gazing with awe and amazement as often as you can.
May you gaze with new eyes on the beauty all around you. And may the simple, yet amazing, pleasures each day nourish your heart and give you hope.
Gazing with Reverence…
“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”
―John Milton
Come Alive!
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
― Howard Thurman
Smack Dab in the Middle of a Thursday
Why do I resist calling it a miracle, this light
that in eight minutes and twenty seconds
has travelled ninety-three million miles
through solar wind particles and radiation
and countless numbers of solar neutrinos
to land here on my living room floor?
As if because it can be measured
and tracked it is any less divine.
As if, just because it’s been happening
for four point five billion years
it is any less extraordinary,
this journey of warmth and radiance.
I let the light-loving animal of my being
curl into the spaces of the room
where the sunlight pools in bright welcome,
and I soften, soften into the wonder
of being alive in this very moment
in this very body with this very heart
meeting this very gentle amazement, this:
even as the heart breaks and burns,
bliss.
― Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, The Unfolding
