The Way of Wonder: Invitations and Simple Practices for a Vibrant Life

by Patti Pagliei, John Simpson

Overview

Find your way to a life full of wonder led by the thoughtful poems, powerful sayings, and heartfelt essays and invitations in this elegantly designed book.

In The Way of Wonder, co-founders of the inspiring jewelry brand Waxing Poetic—Patti Pagliei and her partner, John—invite you on a journey full of wonder and vibrant living, a voyage of nows to help you live a more intentional life.

Divided into four parts—The Invitation, Magical Gateways, Exalted Encounters, and Ongoing Celebrations—this book serves as an invitation for you to discover wonder as a way in your every day, to make meaningful connections and appreciate what each moment in this precious life can call us to experience.

The chapters within each section touch on different concepts dealing with courage, doubt, joy, fear, trust, growth, love, and much more. Each chapter reveals the ways in which you can find wonder and how your life comes alive with possibility when you do. As you read, you will grow to:
 

• Find more joy in the ordinary.
• Learn to trust the universe.
• Have the courage to seek beauty in darkness.
• Free yourself from the confines placed on you by your mind and the constructs of society.

By the end, you will understand that within each sensing moment lies a profound opportunity to awaken again to the light of our lives, ourselves, and our truth.

Accept the invitation to The Way of Wonder and let yourself uncover the rich and fulfilling life that awaits you.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631069628
Publisher:	Rock Point
Publication date:	09/19/2023
Pages:	168
Sales rank:	984,418
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 5.80(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Patti Pagliei and John Simpson are a husband-and-wife duo and partners in a creative syndicate that includes the inspirational jewelry brand Waxing Poetic and a weekly newsletter, Here Today, with John and Patti.
 
Their life together has been alighted to the way of wonder through their adventures and artful endeavors, but also several life-changing health, home, and business challenges. Forced to reexamine their perceived limitations, they uncovered the way for this book, which they consider—along with their family and zest for life—one of their greatest successes. They currently live in Santa Barbara, California, with their daughter, Lulu.

 

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

We’ve been Waxing Poetic for just over twenty years. A privilege. A lesson in living. A craft. We have consistently served up inspiration and talismans for our community—offering connection and openings to wonder.

So to be able to write a book about wonder, to have pages upon pages to explore the topic after working under its guidance for such a long time, is a serendipitous gift. We are as surprised as can be that this has happened. This is how wonder works.

Over the years, our brand vision at Waxing Poetic has been to magnify the unabashed joy of living a vibrant life through poetry and stories that honor the gift of being here. This work is the basis of this book and the dawn of The Way of Wonder.

It is with a can-do zest that I have taken on the writing of this book as your solo narrator, but the concepts within it have been ideated, teased out, and edited with care through the extraordinary insights of my partner John. In writing this book, I have had the cathartic pleasure of poring over the Waxing Poetic archive: twenty-plus years of poetry, fragments, prose, ideas, conversations, ramblings, and revelations—synthesizing some of our most moving concepts and messages and augmenting these with some new essays and insights.

But truly, the way of The Way of Wonder was uncovered through many late-night kitchen talks, wilderness walks, quiet understandings, and radical awakenings with John. We are co-creators of our life and this book. And co-experiencers. We’ve had our triumphs and thrills, but also trials. We have been through it. We’ve had significant losses and our dreams interrupted: my cancer, our daughter’s illness, and many unforeseen life challenges. It is through all of these things that John and I can compassionately know anything about wonder at all.

Mostly, I know that wonder is an ever-present opening: a way of showing us how to move through life, so we don’t lose ourselves. A way to save us from the tyranny of our heads on a moment-to-moment basis and bring us back into our life. The life we will regret not living later if we don’t live it now. This is what I hope to articulate to you here.

Throughout this book, in some ways small and some vast, we uncover invitations to wonder that await with heart and intention for your journey. All hold the same worthy promise: to imbue your experience of the world with all manner of goodness. There is something so alive and magical about feeling the wonder inside and around you. It doesn’t matter if you are lit by riding a wave, the darting of a hummingbird, a long shooting star, or a dull knife full of Dijon mustard. Get your wonder where you can. Like finding your balance on a bicycle, wonder will always set you right, show you what is possible, and whirl some wind through your hair while doing it.

I’m not pretending I have this licked, but I know that this medicinal fountain is constantly flowing. And I want to help you (and myself, and everyone interested) to drink from it.