RSS feed

Wonder

previous

Also: Awe

Wonder is a sense of how grand and marvelous life is, both our own small lives and the vast and intricate web of being in which we exist.


When we are caught up in the wonder of it all, we find ourselves humble, grateful and curious. We are open to small beauties that surround us as we go through our ordinary tasks and we are open to the marvel of being part of something much larger than ourselves.


Wonder can be evoked by rituals or spiritual practices, by natural beauty, by scientific inquiry, or, if we are attentive, by day-to-day living. In each of these it is intimately related to a sense of the sacred. We find ourselves wanting to honor, celebrate, preserve or protect that which we have glimpsed. Sometimes we relish a quiet, secret sense of delight; often we want to share the experience with others.

    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
"And paradise will be brought near to the God-conscious, no longer will it be distant: This is what was promised for you - to everyone who would turn to God and keep God always in remembrance - who stood in awe of the Most Compassionate though unseen and brought a heart turned in devotion to God." [Qur'an: 50:31-33]

Source (click to close)

Source type: Book
The Light of Dawn: Daily Readings from the Holy Qur'an
by Selected and rendered by Camille Helminski
Page p. 148
Published by Shambhala , Boston and London , 2000
http://www.amazon.com
Contribution #2827


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
"For sixty years I have been forgetful every minute, but not for a second has this flowing toward me stopped or slowed."

Source (click to close)

Source type: Book
A Year With Rumi
by Coleman Barks, editor and translator
Page p. 367
Published by Harper , San Francisco, CA , 2006
http://
Contribution #2819


    • Currently 5.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Website
Philip K. Dick
"Philip K. Dick Quotes"
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick
Viewed on December 15, 2008
Contribution #2806


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Book
Death Comes for the Archbishop
Published in 1927
http://
Contribution #2779


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2778


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2772


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2767


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2763


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Book
Gitanjali
http://
Contribution #2758


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2739


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2662


    • Currently 2.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
One can only be humbled by the richness of the animal and plant life on this place we call Earth – the diversity of life in the oceans – so evident here on the Great Barrier Reef. Hundreds of soft and hard corals, fish species and marine animals. I want to do my part to secure this wonderful world for future generations.

Source (click to close)

Starbucks - The Way I See It #231
http://www.starbucks.com/retail/thewayiseeit_default.asp?act=0&first=8
Contribution #2598


    • Currently 5.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster

We live comfortably in the patches of reality where theory is tolerably successful, where reason is functional and predictability predominates. But any day an unexpected event may expel us from this Eden into the larger world of the incomprehensible.


It is then that our attitude will sustain or sink us. If we can revel in the mystery, keeping faith in our sights, then we will thrive and grow stronger.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Website
Josh Mitteldorf
"Daily Inspiration 5 October 2008"
http://daily-inspiration.org/
Viewed on November 3, 2008
Contribution #2510


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2409


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
The day I see a leaf is a marvel of a day.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2408


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2407


    • Currently 3.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2404


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza... I have found no better expression than "religious" for confidence in the rational nature of reality, insofar as it is accessible to human reason. Whenever this feeling is absent, science degenerates into uninspired empiricism.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Book
Letters to Solovine
Page Letter to Maurice Solovine, January 1, 1951
Published in 1993
http://
Contribution #2403


    • Currently 3.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
I believe in mystery and, frankly, I sometimes face this mystery with great fear. In other words, I think that there are many things in the universe that we cannot perceive or penetrate, and that also we experience some of the most beautiful things in life only in a very primitive form. Only in relation to these mysteries do I consider myself to be a religious man....

Source (click to close)

Interview with Peter A. Bucky, quoted in: The Private Albert Einstein
Contribution #2402


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence - as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Book
The World As I See It
Published in 1949
http://
Contribution #2401


    • Currently 4.5/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2122


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
The world will never starve for a want of wonders, but only for want of wonder.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2113


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2082


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
The Universe is one great kindergarten for man. Everything that exists has brought with it its own peculiar lesson. The mountain teaches stability and grandeur; the ocean immensity and change. Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes, -- every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. Even the bee and ant have brought their little lessons of industry and economy.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #2008


    • Currently 5.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #1986


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
In the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Book
The Prophet
Page 59
Published by Alfred A. Knopf , New York , 1992
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~pvk/literature/gibran/gibran19.html
Contribution #1840


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
Two things fill the mind with ever increasing wonder and awe. The more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Website
Emanuel Kant
http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/kant/kant.html
Contribution #1748


    • Currently 4.5/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #1731


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and more precious.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #1715


    • Currently 5.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
Life is filled with suffering, but it is also filled with many wonders, like the blue sky, the sunshine, the eyes of a baby.  To suffer is not enough.  We must also be in touch with the wonders of life.  They are within us and all around us, everywhere, any time.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Book
Being Peace
by Arnold Kotler - Editor
Page 3
Published by Parallax Press , Berkeley, CA, USA , 1996
http://
Contribution #1615


    • Currently 5.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
If I had influence with the good fairy, I would ask that her gift to each child be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life. 

Source (click to close)

Source type: Book
Brilliance: Uncommon Voices from Uncommon Women
by Dan Zadra
Page 10
Published by Compendium Publishing , Lynnwood, WA, USA , 2005
http://
Contribution #1352


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
The deeper we look into nature the more we recognize that it is full of life, and the more profoundly we know that all life is a secret, and we are all united to all this life.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Website
Albert Schweitzer
http://proverb.taiwanonline.org
Contribution #1348


    • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Book
The World As I See It
Published in 1949
http://
Contribution #1122


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
When it is all over, I want to say: All my life I was a bride married to amazement, I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Website
Mary Oliver
http://wiki.seedsofcompassion.org
Contribution #1058


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
Creativity can never be explained by appeal to reason alone.  Like the birth of a child, creativity compels us not to explanation but to wonder and awe.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #1035


    • Currently 5.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
As knowledge increases, wonder deepens.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Website
Charles Morgan
Viewed on April 13, 2008
Contribution #643


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
It was through the feeling of wonder that men now and at first began to philosophize.

Source (click to close)

Source type: Website
Aristotle
Viewed on April 13, 2008
Contribution #642


    • Currently 0.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
In that process of coming to know that which we name as divine, the God who is love is slowly transformed into the love that is God. Let me repeat that...We breathe love in, and we breathe love out. It is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. It is never exhausted, always expanding. When I try to describe this reality, words fail me; so I simply utter the name God. That name, however, is no longer for me the name of a being...

Source (click to close)

Source type: Book
A New Christianity for a New World
by John Shelby Spong
Page page 71
Published by Harper Collins , San Francisco , 2001
http://
Contribution #623


    • Currently 3.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
Wonder implies the desire to learn.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #299


    • Currently 3.0/5 Stars.
  • Blank
  • Comment on this wisbit
  • Print a poster
To know how to wonder and question is the first step of the mind toward discovery.

Source (click to close)

No source entered for Contribution #55