"You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary. Something you have seen a thousand times you suddenly see as if for the first time like a looking glass over the mantle or the curtains of the bed."
It appears to me he is bringing up the idea of wonder. Wonder - I think - is for a moment losing our blindness to every day miracles. It can be the moments we are floored by breath-taking views like sunsets or mountains. Wonder can also be caused by seeing the beauty and detail of the ordinary. Sometimes it is just realizing how much complexity and creativity is put into one single second of the universe.
The funny thing is that it isn't the world that changes in these moments of awe. There is not one thing on this earth that is dull or unimpressive. Anything you think you can point at and call boring I dare you to take a closer look at. There's a quote by someone and - sadly - I can't remember who but it goes like "There is no such thing as an uninteresting subject, the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person."
Now I know the world isn't perfect. Obviously the Fall dealt a serious blow and even the beauty here is flawed. It can be dark and cruel sometimes, but though it is flawed it's still beautiful.
So if I'm not talking crazy and there are others out there who agree with me on this topic of wonder, I pose this question: Why are we so often uninterested in this fascinating yet frightening world? And what breaks in during those moments and causes us to wonder?
won·der
ˈwəndər/
noun
- 1.a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable."he had stood in front of it, observing the intricacy of the ironwork with the wonder of a child"
synonyms: awe, admiration, wonderment, fascination; More
verb
- 1.desire or be curious to know something."how many times have I written that, I wonder?"
synonyms: ponder, think about, meditate on, reflect on, muse on, puzzle over, speculate about, conjecture;
be curious about"I wondered what was on her mind"
Hello.
ReplyDeleteI think we are uninterested because our broken, sinful nature urges us to be self-centered. It is hard to think about how wonderful something is when you only think about yourself and how it can help you accomplish your goal. If it can't help then it's alien, and alien is unknown, which is intimidating when you want to know everything. If this is the answer to the first question, the answer to the second would be the Holy Spirit breaking in and saying, "Wake up, you sleepyhead! Take a closer look at what God has given you. You don't have to know everything."
Also, I googled your quote and this is what I found: "There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person."
- G. K. Chesterton
Ah, thanks Tayler. I think you made two fantastic points and I agree with you on both. I think wonder is closely tied to humility, a realization of our smallness and God's bigness and reacting accordingly. Basically: realizing the world isn't about us and we don't know anything. I really like the end of Isaiah 40:28 because as it describes God it says 'His understanding is unsearchable'. You were spot on when you said we want to know everything, and sometimes we think we do which is the saddest of all because then we stop learning anything. But it's pretty humbling to realize there is so much more to life than ourselves, it's really quite freeing. Thanks for the comment and sorry if this sounded like a sermon. :)
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