My husband told a friend that I have been in a foul mood these days. I did not disagree. Is it any wonder why?

As a balm to my overwrought soul, I was fortunate to spend more time with my parents and their friends a few weeks ago. I heard the new chaplain speak, and her message echoed that of the one I heard from the Bible study during the previous visit. Using the metaphor of a cup filled with water, she suggested that we do ourselves an injustice when we try to fit God into our cup. Instead, she emptied the cup and dropped it into a bucket of water. God is all around us just like the cup in water. We should dwell in the mystery of being surrounded by something much larger than ourselves, larger than our own imaginations.

That same message is the theme of Denise Levertov’s poem, “Primary Wonder.” She gets straight to the point in the first sentence: “Days pass when I forget the mystery.” She goes on to describe all the ways life gets in our way of experiencing the mystery that “there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory.” While some may be put off by the Christian imagery, I think the poem speaks to anyone who has had an experience of getting beyond the day-to-day diversions to a deeper connection with the mystery.

Levertov’s spiritual journey is fascinating: born to a Hasidic Jewish scholar and Welsh mother, she was an agnostic for much of her life, converting to Catholicism in the 1980s.

You can read the complete poem here.