Last week, Steve commented on the way certain moments in interviews linger, on the way you can find yourself returning to a particular insight over days or weeks.  I think of this as part of the private life of an interviewer, the thing that happens over the course of editing a conversation. Little by little, as you listen back, certain words and images, tones and resonances open up. You begin to hear the shape of the conversation, what it wants to be on its own terms. I’ve always wondered if this is what the ancient monastic discipline of lectio divina, or holy reading, feels like. In her spiritual memoir, “Cloister Walk,” Kathleen Norris describes it as “listening [that] aims to still body and soul so that the words of a reading may sink in.”  Such silence, she notes, “tends to open a person.” 

As editors, Steve and I are meticulous about different things; we trade our edits back and forth, discussing flow and pace and logic – but when this second, interior life of a conversation takes up residence inside us, we’re often quiet about it. The experience, at least at first, is wordless and unfolds in its own time.

I had something like this happen a few weeks ago, after a conversation with Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, the founding editor of Emergence Magazine. (It’s in the Wonder Cabinet feed now.)  We talked for a long time, about Sufi mysticism, dreams, ancient birdsong, the liminal space of jazz improvisation – and what I especially loved, Emmanuel’s vision of Earth as living, sacred mother. 

After we said goodbye, I went for a bike ride on a path that goes for miles through an arboretum and along a converted railroad track. It was early summer, there were banks of wild pink and purple phlox in bloom, the air smelled green and warm, and Emmanuel’s words echoed: 

“Earth is this incredible outpouring of abundance and compassion. She gives and she gives and she gives, regardless of how we treat her. In the midst of how we are destroying this incredible gift, she gives. She holds. She invites us. The more I step into the love, the more I can actually feel grief sometimes. But the love helps me hold the grief. It's messy – but we're not alone.”

Some experiences are too vast for words. And yet, words can trigger them. That is, surely, the original meaning of enchantment:  from en-chanter, to sing into something. Sing into aliveness, maybe. Into a fresh experience of wonder and grace. I hope you find words worth mulling over this week, that something you read or hear pulls you into that deeper life, and that you find joy and sustenance there.

In the meantime, Steve and I leave for Vermont in a couple of days.  We’ll be there for the rest of the summer, spending time with family and hosting friends and enjoying the Green Mountains and Connecticut River Valley.  Wonder Cabinet will take a summer break too – but we’ll be back in August, refreshed and with new episodes to share.

Happy summer!

— Anne