Read an Excerpt

From Wild Comfort

Now, back home in my ordinary little house, roof ticking under the usual spring rain, I’m thinking about sardines. To see the blue flash of sardines for the first time, to see it with new eyes—there is no escaping the wonder of it. But doesn’t the world offer more? What if I could see the familiar world as if I had never seen it before, even if I see it every day—with that wonderment and surprise? Or what if I could see it as if I would never see it again? Then imagine the glory. I’m thinking it’s a paltry sense of wonder that requires something new every day. I confess: wonder is easy when you travel to desert islands in search of experiences you have never imagined, in search of something you have never seen before, in search of wonder, the shock of surprise. It’s easy, and maybe it’s cheap. It’s not what the world asks of us.

To be worthy of the astonishing world, a sense of wonder will be a way of life, in every place and time, no matter how familiar: to listen in the dark of every night, to praise the mystery of every returning day, to be astonished again and again and again, to be grateful with an intensity that cannot be distinguished from joy.