In Welcome Center, Justin Den Herder crafts a luminous, compassionate poetic landscape where the spiritual intersects with the everyday, and wonder is not a rarity but a practice. These poems gather readers at the brink of mystery and memory, teasing out the transformative potential of presence. Structured in five parts, the book is arranged like a hike through strata of human experience from the natural to the divine. It posits that welcome is a fundamental and defining characteristic of being human. These poems believe in the power of attention and mercy. In a world obsessed with motion and achievement, Welcome Center makes a radical gesture; it asks us to center ourselves by pausing and witnessing. 'Maybe appreciation is our purest action'.