Welcome,
I'm Ashley McCann and this meditation is a reading from Catherine May's Enchantment,
Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age.
This life I have made is too small.
It doesn't allow enough in,
Enough ideas,
Enough beliefs,
Enough encounters with the exuberant magic of existence.
I have been so keen to deny it,
To veer deliberately toward the rational,
To cling solely to the experiences that are directly observable by others.
Only now,
When everything is taken away,
Can I see what a folly this is.
I don't want that life anymore.
I want what the ancients had,
To be able to talk to God,
Not in a personal sense to a distant figure who is unfathomably wise,
But to have a direct encounter with the flow of things,
A communication without words.
I want to let something break in me,
Some dam that has been shoring up the shamefully atavistic sense of the magic behind all things,
The tingle of intelligence that was always waiting for me when I came to tap in.
I want to feel that raw elemental awe that my ancestors felt,
Rather than my tame explained modern version.
I want to prise open the confines of my skull and let in a flood of light and air and mystery.
I want to retain what the quiet reveals,
The small voices,
Whose whispers can only be heard when everything else falls silent.
Exhale,
Allow that silence in.
Does it reveal?
What do the small voices have to share with you?
What if you were to let in that flood of light and air and mystery,
To connect to the magic behind all things?
Feel that tingle of intelligence that is always there,
Waiting for you when you come to tap in.
