Wonder: Our only fitting attitude
In the era of instant everythng, have we lost our capacity for awe? With too much time, food and vast varieties of entertainment a finger tap away, dark and dangerous can look exciting and adventurous. And boredom can drive the more vulnerable among us to drug induced highs.
With another tap of the finger or simply askng our miniature cellular AI, we believe all our questions can be answered.
I understand the absence of wonder.
There was a time when I had this memorized, the words represented truth to my twenty-something atheist’s heart, immersed and lost in the sea of the thoughts of others.
Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder…
That’s what can happen when we immerse ourselves in the thoughts of others: we get lost.
It’s funny because a few years ago, I reread the book I so loved back then, The Great Gatsby.
Only to wonder why I’d loved it so. Disagreeing heartily with a writer who insists we should return to Daisy, Nick and Gatsby.
With ease I can return to the young girl I once was,
hungry to learn from those I believed to have the answers; to have asked all of the questions that swarmed in my mind. The yearning for truth and wisdom beckoned. I never doubted that they lay dormant within some professor or author or advanced degree…or maybe even in a sacred place somewhere.
Only after a few more decades and three advanced degrees did I comprehend that wisdom doesn’t line the walls aof academia. And learn that wise academic faculty members are rare, even precious. I was exceptionally fortunate to encounter three: two in undergraduate and one in my doctoral program.
As I re-read the words many years later, again I am drawn by the lyrical, lush-almost profligate beauty of Fitzgerald’s prose but profoundly aware of the despair implicit in his words. Fitzgerald’s America of 1925 was similar to our own: cynical, nihilistic, war weary and fearful of plague.
And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past
Boring and self-indulgent
were my several decade later reactions to the characters of The Great Gatsby who’d so enthralled me so many years ago. True despite the still lyrically beautiful Fitzgerald prose.
Why?
Because I believe the words, wonder: our only fitting attitude to everything.
Why, because of faith?
Actually, no. Because during those dangerous days in college, I decided that happiness is a decision, not a feeling. For me that meant a number of things. But primarily, it was that happiness, or the lack of it, resided in me. Not another.
If I was unhappy about something, it was up to me to change whatever the thing was. But if I was unable or unwilling to change it, “screw my brain around” and be happy in the situation. Because happiness was dependent on only one thing: my attitude about whatever was happening to me or around me. Or at least, avoiding unhappiness.
Only later did I learn that this is axiomatic of the stoic.
But there’s more, and it has to do with wonder. an to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder…
That’s what can happen when we immerse ourselves in the thoughts of others: we get lost.
It’s funny because a few years ago, I reread the book I so loved back then, The Great Gatsby.
Only to wonder why I’d loved it so. Disagreeing heartily with a writer who insists we should return to Daisy, Nick and Gatsby.
But there’s more, and it has to do with wonder.
Because we’ve been trained in the mechanistic views of the so-called “enlightenment,” we don’t see.
We’re blinded.
“Bishop Barron said the “fundamental problem” is not science, but rather scientism, or “the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge.”
But scientism cannot address questions of beauty, morality or transcendence, which become “meaningless” when reduced to scientific facts, the bishop said.”
Amen?
When we sense wonder, we know it’s Other,
it’s different from the happiness that’s rooted in discipline and self-control. Wonder-awe-sweeps over us, almost like a massive wave that engulfs us in itself. Those feelings of wonder at a sunrise or a brand new baby, or listening to Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony.
We can make wonder habit by refusing the lure of the ubiquious phone to look around us. And stay awake so we’ll not miss the miracles that appear before us almost constantly.
And stop our internal and verbal chatter.
Invariably we’re led to gratitude for the sheer immensity and majesty of this world we’ve been given.
Aware that’s all gift. Everything: our lives, our careers, our friends, children and family. The air we breathe and water we drink.
The problems we’ve solved, like my decision about happiness: all gift.
And then gratitude leads us straight to faith then joy.
Below is the first of five videos that reveal the proper wonder to creation, creatures. Wonder: The Harmony of Faith and Science.
And corrects our childish beliefs that we understand- anything.
The greatest honor we can give Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.
Julian of Norwich
And then gratitude leads us straight to faith. Wonder: Our only fitting attitude.
