The Enchanted Life

Ahhh...the enchanted life...flowers & fairies & a world made out of chocolate...hmmm... nah, that's not what this post is going to be about (okay, together now: SIGH) I went to my favorite store (Half Priced Books, naturally) with my husband a week ago and I am slowing moving through the mountain of books I acquired. Just started reading this one today & its rocking me..Its called "The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life" by Thomas Moore. So far so good. Thought I'd share some thought-provoking quotes with you. Enjoy!

-"a culture dedicated to enchantment recognizes our need to be live in a world both of facts and HOLY IIMAGINATION"

-"without enchantment we try to rationally forge intimacies and connections, but our efforts are futile. The modern family is falling apart, marriages can't hold, neighborhoods are disapearing...We're not holding together, and that is a problem of eros- love and attachment"

-"i would rather be a dysfuncitonal soul than a well adjusted robot"

-"we translate science into technology- an alternative is to translate science into wonder, philospohy, story and intimacy..."

-" we seem to think we are victims of the evolutionary process instead of makers and artists of our own culture and individual lives"

-**"there isn't much room for faith in a religion that is reduced to belief, and there isn't any place for open-minded appreciation of the world's sacredness. in a disenchanted world, for all its concern for morals and social action, religion separates itself from everyday life and becomes obsessed with its own brand of belief and moral purity. In that kind of setting, the people who pollute ourrivers and oceans and exploit workers and families may go to church and profess strong moral values, and yet they don't have conscience about the earth or the human community. there is something dreadfully wrong with this kind of religion, which creates psychotic dissociation. a person feels morally pure because he is blissfully adhering to ideas of morality that have little to do with the world in which he lives, and at the same time he is committing heinous sins that are not catalouged in his disenchanted morality. The source of modern discontentment is the loss of real religion."**

-"our reduction of imagination to psychology steals the magic away from a potentially RICH POETIC PARTICIPATION IN LIFE."

-"we may have only passing sensations of enchantment, lasting minutes or seconds, and yet these brief epiphanies are sufficient, and they may bring with them a sense of DEEP MEMORY"

-**"I AM ALWAYS SEACHING FOR AN ALTERNATIVE TO EXPLANATION, FOR A MIDREALM WHERE IMAGINATION IS TAKING SERIOUSLY, TOHUGH NOT LITERALLY"

-"recover a BEGINNER's MIND and a CHILD's WONDER"