Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

by Katherine May

I also miss the community that came with it, the group of women I used to swim with a few times a week, the way we all felt brave together. I miss the ten minutes of intense joyous chatter, the sense of release, of our stresses held in the mesh of collective concern, even if for a few short moments. I miss the wisdom of the group, the sense that I could bring any problem there and have it gently probed and understood, with solutions offered as the gifts of lived experience. I miss the days when I could feel held by the water and held by the people I swam with, all at once; and when I felt useful enough to hold them in return. But most of all, I miss the sense of worship that comes when I get into the sea. I miss the feeling that I am entering a vast cathedral, and, rather than sitting in its dry pews, that I am merging with it. I miss how when I feel the pull of the tides, I am also feeling the pull of the whole world, of the moon and the sun; that I am part of a chain of interconnection that crosses galaxies.