People who truly know how to wonder don’t expend a great deal of energy talking about it; they are off catching snowflakes on hot tongues. They’re folding themselves in half to smell the sweet potatoes in the oven just one more time. I no longer try to convince someone of the delight of soup dumplings; I take them to Dim Sum Garden on Race Street in Philly and let them watch me slurp. I let the steaming miracle broth run down my face and lap it up in remembrance.
I think awe is an exercise, both a doing and a being. It is a spiritual muscle of our humanity that we can only keep from atrophying if we exercise it habitually. I sit in the clearing behind Wisewood listening to the song of the barn swallows mix with the sound of cars speeding by. I watch the milk current through my tea and the little leaves dance free from their pouch. I linger in the mirror and I don’t look away. I trace the shadows hugging my lips and I don’t look away. Awe is not a lens through which to see the world but our sole path to seeing. Any other lens is not a lens but a veil. And I’ve come to believe that our beholding – seeing the veils of this world peeled back again and again, if only for a moment – is no small form of salvation.
— Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh, p. 31
Photo: Cherry blossoms, South Riding, Virginia, March 24, 2026