Rediscovering Enchantment: Thomas Moore's Guide to Reconnecting with Nature and Life

Today, I encounter someone who asserts that one can't find good books nowadays – the bookstores are filled with garbage, and hence why bother visiting them? While this might be a little rude to any author, it’s true that among those shelves are real treasures. One such gem is Thomas Moore's The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life, which functions as an accompaniment to Moore's Care of the Soul and Soul Mates. Moore understands our dissatisfaction with modern life, encouraging us to return to the simple yet enchanting sources that once filled us with wonder as children.

He writes in the introduction:

Enchantment is a spiritual upliftment; it enables most people to connect lovingly and intimately with their surroundings – including families, communities, nature. Without this enchantment, we try to forge relationships and connections purely rationally, but they are futile. Consider some of our modern-day complnts: disintegrating family units, marriages that crumble, fading neighborhoods, and the devastation of nature. We're not holding together, it's a love and attachment issue. But if we lived in an enchanted world, our motivation would be towards intimacy and closeness.

Moore sps most of his book explning how to restore that intimacy and closeness as we relate to nature, home, habitat, and the wider world. He begins by discussing the importance of nature for the soul:

All lessons on enchantment start with nature – observing animals that exhibit 'pure soul' like Robert Sardello once noted; natural rhythms like day and night, seasons and tides; our instincts, sensations, nature itself as part of and reflective of our environment. It's easy to philosophize about being in tune with nature abstractly but the essence is living this realization dly by making local nature a concrete element in dly life. This is a necessary initial step towards re-enchanting individual lives, although society needs time to realize it can't survive ely without surrering some authority and initiative to nature.

While Moore makes no to birds, they're easy to integrate into these concepts about enriching and enchanting our everyday lives through interactions with them. I've had many moments of wonder and enchantment that come from observing birds up close, and Moore’s beautiful book, rich in emotion as well as intelligence and ideas, explns why it's crucial for all of us to seek out enchanted moments to stay connected with the world and our place within it.

The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life is a great book – one I was glad to pay full price for rather than wting for the paperback edition.
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