Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

by Katherine May

Here we are, swimming in deep time. We have let the sea show us a fragment of its power, and in return, we’ve shown it our power and our will and our sheer exuberant joy. That night, when I lie in bed, I can still feel that swell rising and falling in me. A part of me is always suspicious of groups. I am by nature a solitary animal. I like to do things my way, and in my own good time. I’m resistant to timetables and demands on my attention, and to the kind of politics that always seem to arise between adults who join clubs. I hate organised fun. Overall, I prefer to make my own ad hoc arrangements with a couple of close friends. But more and more I crave being part of a congregation, a group of people with whom I can gather to reflect and contemplate, to hear the ways that others have solved this puzzling problem of existence. Most of all, I want them to hold me to account, to keep me on track, to urge me towards doing good. Holding spiritual beliefs on my own is lonely. I want to be part of a group that makes me return to ideas that bewilder and challenge me. I realise that this is contradictory, but I do believe that congregations can be loose enough to hold people like me, those who will attend unreliably and prefer to lurk on the sidelines.