The Juice is Marvel - Where I Tend to Want to Go

I’ve been learning an exponential amount of emergent stuff lately. This business with the Aldebaran is like a coding intensive and I’m barely holding on, but what a fun ride!

This morning my colleague Lidia taught the 6AM Restorative Storytelling practice session that includes many international folk and she led me through an exercise that landed what I’m about to share.

The exercise was part of the “Intuitive Navigation” tool aimed at practicing reading the room. Quite simply you:

1. Open your intuition through some signal.

2. Imagine your group of listeners.

3. Let your attention widen and notice where it falls.

4. Start your story there, pausing regularly to be inspired.

5. End the story and the connection.

Pretty straightforward, so long as you are comfortable with the story being a little sloppy or wandery. In RS, we love the sloppy and wandery.

I did the exercise and my intended group of listeners was you.

My attention landed on a smooth stone.

 

I was immediately reminded of the Tolkien epic story Silmarillion and the image of the elves standing by the edge of the ocean looking up at the stars. The feeling this image gave me was of complete and utter connection to all that is and the privilege and gratitude I imagined the elves felt. I thought in that moment “this is what we all want” and what I eventually realized was that what we all want might be to feel connected to all that is and to feel gratitude.

In a word, we want marvel.

This felt right and I started my story there. I told a story of the music of the stars and the people who listen to it, and my attention then landed on the image of a tree hanging on the far wall.

 

The story shifted to something very terrestrial where people continued to reach out, like the branches of a tree, looking for that connection, looking for that feeling—while our roots did the same, but quietly underground. We reached and searched and hoped and occasionally found it. But its not the same as the elves. Not the same as our primordial ancestors.

The story told me that it isn’t happiness we seek. Clearly not riches and fame. It isn’t even love. Its marvel. Marvel is what we deeply want. Awe, wonder, and gratitude. I do think gratitude is a kind of marvel, only less tied to the mystery.

So what is the juice that feeds us? Marvel.

To wonder at what we have, marvel at its unique sparkle. Wherever we are and however we live, love and vote. (I felt you tense up at that last verb, but if this is true, then it needs to be true for all of it. Even elections.)

I wish you all marvel today.