Married to Amazement: Geneen Roth Retreat

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”

These lines by poet Mary Oliver were a theme threading through the retreat with Geneen Roth. Although I’d read the poem many times before, it was a qualitatively different experience to sit with the words, to drop into deep amazement. This morning the state that they invoke feels like the biggest “takeaway” from the event.

From a place of amazement I drop into deep curiosity about what my unique body and self are doing here in this life. I want to know more about that. I’m less inclined to move back into the old familiar grooves of self-soothing. I’m way more aware of the new life that wants to reveal itself.

It’s like gratitude, only bigger. Instead of making my daily list and then moving on, I’m breathing it in, allowing myself to be touched and moved by the force of life itself.

And it feels like the best nourishment of all.