wonder

I'm not interested in being Wonder Woman in the delivery room. Give me drugs. Requesting an epidural in advance of childbirth.

He who grown aged in this world of woe, In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life, So that no wonder waits him.

A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour!

In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

The Jews, my beloved, awaited the coming of a Messiah, who had been promised them, and who was to deliver them from bondage. And the Great Soul of the World sensed that the worship of Jupiter and Minerva no longer availed, for the thirsty hearts of men could not be quenched with that wine. In Rome men pondered the divinity of Apollo, a god without pity, and beauty of Venus already fallen into decay. For deep in their hearts, though they did not understand it, these nations hungered and thirsted for the supreme teaching that would transcend any to be found on the earth. They yearned for the spirit's freedom that would teach man to rejoice with his neighbor at the light of the sun and the wonder of living. For it is this cherished freedom that brings man close to the Unseen, which he can approach without fear or shame.

Not all those who wonder are lost.

There was a roar and a great confusion of noise. Fires lept up and licked the roof. The throbbing grew to a great tumult, and the Mountain shook. Sam ran to Frodo and picked him up and carried him out to the door. And there upon the dark threshold of the Sammath Naur, high above the plains of Mordor, such wonder and terror came on him that he stood still forgetting all else, and gazed as one turned to stone. Fire belched from its riven summit. The skies burst into thunder seared with lightning. Down like lashing whips fell a torrent of black rain. And into the heart of the storm, with a cry that pierced all other sounds, tearing the clouds asunder, the Nazgûl came, shooting like flaming bolts, as caught in the fiery ruin of hill and sky they crackled, withered, and went out.

How anyone can profess to find animal life interesting and yet take delight in reducing the wonder of any animal to a bloody mass of fur and feathers is beyond my comprehension.

Essentially, mythologies are enormous poems that are renditions of insights, giving some sense of the marvel, the miracle and wonder of life.