The Wonder Paradox Study Guide

The Wonder Paradox was written in order to suggest a template for secular rituals that can substitute for the many holidays, life celebrations, and daily affirmations that religion provides. Since this is one of the primary goals of this wiki project, and most of the poems are in the public domain, much of the poetry used throughout this wiki has been borrowed from her book.

It makes an excellent book club read for secular groups, whose book clubs usually tend towards the more scientific and cerebral than the poetic. It offers a lot of fodder for discussion.

Introduction

This book offers a unique perspective in the atheist literary canon, because it looks at religion from a poetic and functional perspective rather than a literal one. It asks "what psychological functions do rituals and scriptural readings serve?" and acknowledges they can have positive benefits

This book really helps atheists and others with scientific worldviews to understand scripture as poetry that is not meant to be interpreted literally. Like poetry, it contains wisdom in the way it elicits emotional truths, and allows for interpretation that helps create meaning.

Rather than clinging to tradition as many secular gurus have advocated, Hecht constructs a new ritual canon using her extensive knowledge and love of poetry to find words that can convey the necessary gravitas when important moments call for it.

Discussion Questions

• Do you agree that ritual is important to human psychology?
• Can ritual be rational or is it inherently irrational?
• Can poetry reinforce reason?
• Define "cultural liturgy"
• Define "liminal space"
• What do you think of the term "Interfaithless"?

1. Decisions

Many people pray or meditate in order to help make important decisions. These rituals can focus the mind on a problem, help set intentions and goals, and cultivate hope for success.

Discussion Questions

• Can ritualized reflection help with decision making?
• Do any of you have a contemplation or decision making ritual that replaces prayer?
• What is the "sweet spot between gravitas and pleasure" for secular people?

Poems

• Traveler There Is No Road

2. Eating

Many religions encourage saying a prayer before meals, especially holiday meals and banquets. These practices can help us appreciate our food and the complex natural and human systems that have produced the abundance we currently enjoy.

Discussion Questions

• Did your family say prayers before meals?
• Do any of you currently practice a gratitude ritual before meals?
• What about Thanksgiving, holidays, or banquets? Do you offer words of gratitude on these occasions?
• Can a moment of reflection before eating help with diet or eating disorders?
• What are the missing words in "Not only the sugar, but the days, to hold"?

Poems

• From Blossoms
• Frost the Road Not Taken
• Ate the Fellow Raw
• Wild Geese

3. Gratitude

Many scientific studies have shown that practices cultivating gratitude have a huge benefit to our happiness. Prayers of gratitude are a part of every religion in some form.

Discussion Questions

• Do you ever feel the need to thank the universe for being awesome and giving you consciousness?
• Do humanists have a responsibility to cultivate generosity?
• Who has kept a gratitude journal? What was your experience?
• "If you aren't in love with late-capitalism, why are you letting it store all its stuff at your place?"
• Is a poem better if its stanzas follow a mathematical pattern like the Fibonacci sequence?
• What's in your cosmic gratitude poem?

Poems

• Alphabet
• Mark Strand end of poem

4. Sleep

Bedtime rituals can help you calm your mind and create Pavlovian triggers that cause it to enter the sleep state more easily.

Discussion Questions

• Have you ever dreamed about Dolly Parton? Fran Liebowitz? (for those TN or NYC especially)
• Who was taught to say prayers before bed as a kid?
• Can you still recite the "Now I lay me down to sleep...." poem from memory?
• Has anyone kept up a bedtime ritual?
• Can a bedtime ritual help you sleep?

Poems

• The Sleep that Comes Over Me

5. Meditation

Meditation is like prayer without the kayfabe. It can help calm your mind, reduce anxiety and negativity, set goals and intentions, and lead the mind to solutions for persistent personal problems.

Discussion Questions

• Who has done meditation? Who does it regularly?
• Does focusing our mind on our goals or wishes help make them come true?
• Does humanism/science fail to address mental states and qualia?
• Is it possible to develop a scientific practice for describing and inducing mental states?
• What is your original face before your parents were born?
• Who is it who drags your corpse around?
• Do you suffer from rumination? Do you have a mental technique to avoid it?

Poems

• Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code

6. Happier Holidays

Putting the meaning back into holidays that secularism has removed. Recasting harvest holidays as "earth days."

Discussion Questions

• Do you celebrate religious holidays like Christmas and Easter? Did you always?
• Do you celebrate the "humanist holidays"? [1][2]
• We should be doing more Diwalis! (not a question, just a fact)
• What holidays would you feel uncomfortable missing entirely?
• What holidays do you personally work hardest on, in whatever way?
• Are there holidays you dread?
• Which holiday most delights you?
• Are there holidays outside your tradition that you find attractive?
• Which holidays do people in your life care about most?

Poems

• New Year’s morning—  everything is in blossom!   I feel about average.
• Holiday poem template / "Christmas Cabinet"

7. Sad Holidays / Facing our Fears

Sad holidays help us grieve loss and remind us of really bad things that we would like to not forget in order to avoid them in the future, like World Wars and 9/11s.

Discussion Questions

• Don't we really need a good death/ancestor remembrance holiday like day of the dead?
• Does it say something about the way our culture deals with death that we don't have such a holiday?
• Is "being made of star stuff" an inherently scientific, spiritual and poetic concept?
• How does having regular holidays to remember tragic events help people process them?

Poems

• Could Have

8. Shame, Regret, Guilt, and Grace

In the opening story, "I'm just getting ready to be blessed" gives an example of a positive response to misfortune enabled by belief.

Discussion Questions

• Is forgiveness the antidote to cancel culture?
• Is shame a necessary by-product of having high ideals?
• Can you aspire to perfection without feeling shame when you fail to achieve it?
• Purification rituals - good or bad? If we can remove guilt or shame with a ritual, shouldn't we?
• Group fasting - could be fun. Not likely to gain traction in America unless it's "intermittent"
• Do shame and regret subside in middle age? Y'all should know!

Poems

• Sonnet 29

9. Sabbaths and Fool's Days

Celebrating rest, leisure time, and the joy of pulling pranks. It also makes the point that change is the only constant, using the metaphor "you can never wash in the same river twice."

Discussion Questions

• What would you do in a "last man on earth" situation? How long before you get bored?
• Is the sabbath a scriptural version of worker's rights?
• Is the sabbath pronatalism?
• Should we not view having regular days of rest as sacred? The more the better!
• Do you enjoy April Fool's Day? Do you make a point to prank people?
• Other than Loki, who are your favorite trickster gods?

Poems

• Things I Didn't Know I Loved

10. Earth Day, Rebirth, Climate Change

Many holidays celebrate our connection to the Earth already, and many other religious celebrations that invoke god could be reframed as celebrating nature or the universe.

Discussion Questions

• Is connection to nature the materialist's equivalent to connection to god?
• Is Earth day a humanist holiday? Do you make a point to celebrate it?
• Can poetry be a better way to move people to preserve the Earth than climate statistics?
• Could moral imperatives to be good environmental stewards help with climate change?
• How is the experience of understanding an allusion like an inside joke?

Poems

• When the World as we Knew It Ended
• Kubla Khan
• Ozymandius

11. Weddings

If there's ever a time where people regularly research and choose poetry readings, it's a wedding! Weddings are also one of the primary venues for forced religiosity. Often, this is due to a lack of good secular templates for weddings, though this is rapidly changing.

Discussion Questions

• Did you have a religious or a secular wedding?
• Was that what you and your partner wanted at the time?
• How does ritual reinforce the life changes and commitments being made?
• How does the liturgical nature of wedding traditions help you feel "more married"?

Poems

• Married Love
• I Carry Your Heart With Me

12. Babies

Celebrating the brining of a new life into the world is universal. This chapter also discusses the Sufi poet Rumi, whose works offer many great examples of poems that evoke the sacred and wonderous without explicitly supernatural references.

Discussion Questions

• Having a baby - the biggest life change of all?
• What birth rites did you perform when your kids were born?
• Did you have a "baby welcoming ceremony"?

Poems

• You Were Born With Potential

13. Coming of Age

One of the most important rituals that we neglect in the modern age is the Coming of Age ceremony. These rituals can help children flip a mental switch into greater maturity and responsibility.

Discussion Questions

• Are graduations is the best coming of age ceremony most kids get? What are they lacking?
• What is the importance of the "liminal space" in the transition to adulthood?
• Have you heard of a "gift book" as a humanist tradition?

Poems

• Nonsense poems
• Jabberwocky

14. Love

Love poems, haiku and limerick are the most common poems that most people write themselves. This chapter also discusses how love poetry and rituals can be an integral part of the process of seduction, allowing people to recognize each others signals and develop emotional bonds with intentionality.

Discussion Questions

• Who has written a love poem before?
• Do you agree with the Hindu list of the types/stages of love?
• What about the idea of using a "love potion" and poem to open your mind to love?
• How is this similar to the placebo effect?
• Does love benefit from scarcity? It it easier to find your soul mate in a small pool? How do arranged marriages and small towns work?

Poems

• Song of Solomon
• I'm Glad You've Lost Your Mind Over Someone and It's Not Me