United by wonder
I don’t know about you, but all I’ve been seeing from friends and family this weekend are beautiful, staggering images of the Northern Lights – taken from their gardens, streets, neighbourhoods. The pictures are spectacular and the colours, textures and majesty of these awe-inspiring moments in time across the world are truly humbling.
Yet it’s not just the light itself that moves us, but the feelings we experience through a charged energy in the atmosphere, for this is what is shifting in space to allow us to experience such wonder. These moments welcome us into a liminal space – like a threshold between worlds - and a sensing into the vastness and mystery of the universe.
It’s good to feel small – it humbles us somehow and welcomes us to be in the world in a different way.
It’s also so energising to recognise that so many people across the world are being drawn together through awe. From Canada to California, Russia to the Netherlands, Ukraine to Switzerland, Scotland, Ireland, England, Wales, vast numbers of people had a shared, felt experience of awe over the past two nights and that matters very much
So often these days, we’re drawn together through crisis – through bad news stories, global suffering, war, catastrophe. Being united in this way is hard as it puts us into a state of collective anxiety. Conversely being united in awe allows us to soften together, to share an experience of the beauty of this life and the extraordinariness of being human – a feeling that life holds so much beauty if only we allow ourselves to welcome it in.
NB: I didn’t see the lights from where I was, but did have a rather mythic drive home last night under a luminous sky. After dropping off a friend, I was driving home with another friend down a quiet Devon lane when a baby deer appeared as if out of nowhere in front of us in the twilight and slowly walked for a while in front of the car. At one point a little mouse ran across our path and then an eerie, haunting sound emerged out of the bushes, making us stop the car and turn off the engine… Sitting in silence for a while listening, we could hear something moving beside us and then above us, and so we got out of the car… to discover a peacock sitting high up in a tree. There was something magical in that moment, like a portal had opened and the world had welcomed us into a different resonance – welcoming into awe and wonder.
This weekend has been magical for many and offered some solace in such a fractious moment in time. Yet whilst the aurora is truly spectacular, we don’t need to wait 20 years to experience these sorts of big feelings or to collectively soften together, we can tap into the awe, wonder and utter magnifience of this world whenever we like. All we need to do is open our eyes a little wider and see what is always here, just waiting for us to notice.
