Best Of Sharon Blackie's "The Enchanted Life"

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from The Enchanted Life: Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday by Sharon Blackie.

Painting above: Woman Waiting for Moon to Rise (c.1944) by Uemura Shōen 

But as a result of that profound attachment to the land, I had learned something about the art of belonging (for it is an art, which can be learned) and I knew that the process of learning to belong to any new place is in part a process of internal mapping.

You can learn to belong anywhere, in this way if you choose. It's an act of creation, and like all acts of creations, it's also an act of love, and an enormous leap of faith.

I was stirred, engaged, joyful; the world had communicated itself to me, 

and I radically belonged to it.

And here's another innate human quality: there is something in us which is always seeking a new frontier, which requires an enigma that can't be easily penetrated, which needs a myth that can't be so easily debunked.

It's just that I love autumn and winter more. Something opens up in me then - 

something soft and deep and glowing - which is far too shy to expose itself to the inexhaustible light of summer.

You couldn't extricate the land from the weather - and it hit me then that I didn't live in a landscape - I lived in a sort of weatherscape.

Stories can reveal to us longings that we never knew we had, fire us up with new ideas and insights, and inspire us to grow and change.

Myths and folklore can put us back in touch with the seasons and turnings of the year, and they can restore our acceptance of the necessary cycles of life. They can also remind us that we have a responsibility to future generations, and to the planet as a whole.

What if we found different myths to live by, and what if those myths taught us to truly value what we have, rather than always striving for more? What if they taught us to value enchantment rather than exploitation?

A house is a living being, and it isn't always benign.

If I were to try and characterise it now, I'd think of it as a curious feeling of profound unbelonging,. A perception of being entirely in the wrong place; a sense of loss intermingled with a strange kind of silent keening.

The houses which shelter us and nurture us and our loved ones are worthy not just of our attention, but of our devotion. They are intrinsic to the fabric of our lives, and deserve to be fully inhabited, loved and filled with beauty.

The opposite of true belonging is nostalgia: a longing for a place which  no longer exists - or which maybe never existed at all, except in our imagination.

How do we begin to acquire this sense of genuine belonging to our local environment? Well, by determining to love something about our place, wherever it might be.

Apprenticeship requires humility: a little-valued quality in a world hell-bent on glory. All the best fairy-tale heroines knew it to be true: sometimes it's okay to say that you're not quite there yet.

An ancient hedge is an enchanted place; a place where anything might happen. A liminal place, where the wisdom of the wild margins is available to all.

It's hedge wisdom that we need now, because hedge wisdom is the wisdom of enchantment. It's precisely the kind of wisdom we need, those of us who are seeking to re-enchant not only our own lives, but the world. It's a wild, loamy wisdom, unbound but deeply rooted.

Look for wonder wherever you go. Be all your life, as American poet Mary Oliver suggested, 

'a bride married to amazement'.

Note: I was unable to provide proper page numbers associated with these quotes because I read this on my e-reader.