I expect that some of these essays can be tedious but I feel compelled to write them, even if they’re to an audience of one. 🙂

No two of us are wired exactly the same, although our wires are all made of basically the same stuff. The way I meet the world each day is not necessarily how many others meet the world, including some who are closest to me. Even when we share a common set of fundamental values, we can each organize them differently. I am fascinated by this for all sorts of reasons.

We can rightfully ask questions like, “What brings us joy? What saddens us? In what do we find the most fulfillment? What occupies our minds and attention when we are at rest? What does a life well-lived look like? Is there anything about me that I would change, if I could?”

These, and many more, are the conscious and subconscious considerations of how we can examine what it means to be alive here and now.

I spoke a couple of weeks ago on how much I enjoyed to read and, especially, to discover new authors who are exceptional in many ways.

Good writing is like looking at a beautiful piece of art or listening to an exquisite piece of music. To me, it’s a matter of absorption. One does not meet these things and allow them to remain on the surface. Instead, should we be so motivated, we can allow them to bore deeply inside of us, touching places that reliably help us to understand who we are.

An obvious touchstone for this kind of thing is to be found nearly everywhere in nature. From the unique and never-replicated symmetry of snowflakes and the miniscule perfections of budding flowers to majestic redwoods and mountains, vast landscapes and seascapes, and on and on … we can marvel and feel joy at being alive to witness such beauty.

I have written before about a thing called wonder. I think our first inclination on considering the nature of wonder is to categorize it as a thought, such as “I wonder what caused that?” Or, perhaps, something like “Wow, that is really beautiful!”

But, I think wonder might also be partially a feeling, a kind of gut-level apprehension of a thing. A sense, perhaps not completely intelligible, that the thing is of some ultimate significance. In other words, its meaning resonates more deeply than words will allow us to go.

Regardless, I am regularly amazed by wonder, both through thought and feeling. There are times when I’ve felt my heart seemingly overflow from the most wondrous things. And, there are times when my mind comes across ideas that seemingly open up whole new vistas of understanding.

Mind you, these are not regular occurrences! Perhaps, that’s one of the reasons I find them so notable when they arrive, nearly always unbidden.

(I read once, I think from C.S. Lewis, who said something to the effect that the longing for a thing can be more compelling than the thing itself. He was speaking, of course, about the ways that we try to fill places in our lives with things that are transitory, not permanent, and the nature of permanency can only be found in God.)

No, the stuff I’m talking about often arrives as a surprise. In writing this, I’m reminded of emerging from the Wawona Tunnel on California’s Highway 41, being stunned by the vista of Yosemite Valley laid out below. Even if the tunnel is familiar, it always comes as kind of a surprise. Which is only natural when we emerge from darkness into beauty. Or, when with friends, high up in the Colorado Rockies in the dead of winter, we come out of a rather steep climb on our snowshoes, through a forest and onto a mountaintop meadow at 10,000 feet, with virgin snow glistening in the sunlight, faced with the panorama of alpine peaks all around. Pure wonderment.

I’ve read some fiction recently that has cause me to weep. Not just tear-up but weep. OK, I have an emotional streak and am known to be passionate about some things. (I confess that I can cry at a Hallmark movie!) But, when the literature expresses a combination of deep meaning and beautifully-crafted language, I find myself in a place not that much unlike what I just described in Yosemite. But more so. The author’s voice being read is one that can neatly cut through the mundane and touch the sacred.

My response to certain books is not exclusive to fiction, of course. I have more than a few bookshelves full of books that have amazed me. As I recently wrote, another amazement is that I continue to find new sources of amazement!

I’m reading one such book right now. This one from an author who, before a week ago, did not exist as far as I was concerned. I have seen several of his lectures on YouTube that have completely captivated me. A small, prideful, part of me is a little jealous that my levels of wisdom are grossly underdeveloped compared to his! Fortunately, though, this tinge of pride is pretty well eclipsed by the joy of learning from him. The joy of this makes me smile and even laugh. New vistas of knowledge that bring wonder while also helping me to tap into deeper understandings of the way things are.

And this particular person, a world-renowned mathematician and scientist at Oxford University (who is also an extremely accomplished philosopher and commentator on the intersection of science and faith) is just one of three that have so struck me in the last week. Go figure!

I am grateful that God gave me both a mind and a heart. Knowledge is a wondrous thing of itself. Knowledge assists us in navigating the simplest things of life but also opens up doors to comprehend the most significant things. The pursuit of knowledge has always been one of the grandest expressions of humans throughout our history. We alone in the universe, so far as we know, are equipped with this ability. Of course, while other animals have their own and more limited scopes of knowledge, they do not possess the sense of it. They do not pursue it.

But, knowledge for knowledge sake is to me, a heartless pursuit because it circumvents the most important purpose for its existence.

At this, I’ll go briefly to the famous biblical account of the Garden and Adam and Eve. (I know that some confront this story literally as an historical thing,  while others take it as metaphor (which, interestingly is also a form of literal interpretation), and still others as mythology. Regardless, the story is a fascinating one and appropriate to our purposes here.)

Very briefly, what is described as the Garden of Eden, is the piece of God’s perfect creation wherein he put his first man and first woman. As the story unfolds, they walk with God in the Garden. They are surrounded by wonderment and unparalleled beauty. They see this and they are fulfilled, just as God intended. But, the voice of the anti-God, embodied in the serpent, whispers that this knowledge is not enough. The voice says that God has not given them the full knowledge that he possesses and that this is wrong, a thought that had not struck them previously. The serpent advised that God was basically hurting them through this limitation and all they had to do was to disobey the one commandment that God had issued. A very small one, they were told. Just eat from the fruit of the special tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Then they would know the mind of God. In essence, become God’s equal. The seduction worked and mankind was, thereafter separated from God.

I bring this up because it’s not knowledge, itself, which is the point or the objective. It’s knowledge that is in concert with God’s plan that should concern us. Just to know things is not necessarily good. Knowledge can just as easily be used for bad as for good. Zyklon B was a German pesticide which was then used to exterminate millions of Jews, who were, in the thinking at the time, merely pests themselves. The “knowledge” or belief in a truth called dialectic materialism served as the justification for killing many tens of millions in the communist Soviet and Chinese utopian experiments. The serpent is assuredly well-pleased.

On the other hand, we have the kinds of knowledge that celebrate what’s best about being human, including both our physical and spiritual flourishing. This kind of knowledge is often received with wonder. The kind of knowledge that arrives when we hear of the selfless act of strangers to risk all to help another. The kind of knowledge that arrives when we hear a community forgive the man who assassinated their children. The kind of knowledge that arrives when we see a broken life made whole or the battered body walking again, its owner with a broad smile on his or her face. The kind of knowledge like that in the Garden, when we are filled with wonder at the beauty of creation.

Yes, when I find a book that opens up doors to new possibilities, to deeper levels of understanding a thing I hold as important, it is like discovering a reflection of beauty. I find this in music and art … the objective of which is not to deconstruct but to construct. Not to lay waste to that which is good but to point to that which is good.

There’s this remarkable thing about little children. Their world is a place of wonderment. They are like magnets for acquiring new knowledge. They become fascinated as their minds grow at phenomenal rates. Their faces light up with joy to the surprises that seemingly unfold in rapid succession. They are trusting in their lack of worldly exposure. Yes, of course, they can be intensely selfish and driven to behaving poorly but they crave new knowledge and we adults rejoice when that is accomplished. We rejoice when we witness the wonder in their eyes. Is this a whisper of the Garden?

For, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3-4.

Knowledge and wonder. Hand in hand. For that, I am truly thankful.