Sense of Wonder

 I haven’t been reading much fiction lately, or watching many movies or TV shows. But I keep finding, in the most surprising places, passages in my non-fiction reading that pertain to sense of wonder.

The title of this post might make you think I’m going to write about C.S. Lewis. Actually, the author in question is John Piper, but I don’t think he’d mind; he likes to quote Lewis.

This quote comes from page 192 of When I Don’t Desire God by John Piper:

The Power of Human Words to Make the World a Cause of Joy

It is not a mistake that so much of the Bible is written in poetry. Nor is it a mistake that there are so many biblical metaphors and similes. The lesson is that God has ordained for language to pierce and portray what colorless language cannot do. The human heart moves irrepressibly toward poetry because it knows intuitively that the natural world is not all there is. The heart may not even believe that the heavens are telling the glory of God. But it knows, deep down, that they are telling something more than meets the physical eye.

Therefore, in our fight for joy it may often be helpful to read penetrating literature and see powerful drama. Not because they can ever rival or replace the Scriptures, but because they are part of the God-revealing creation and its reflection. God did not put us in the world to ignore it, but to use it wisely. From the beginning, human beings have discovered that the reflection of the world in human art wakens us to the world itself and what the world is saying about God. Echoes can waken us to the shout of reality, and poetry can give us eyes to see. If we weren’t afflicted with persistent sleepiness of soul, we might see all the glory there is in nature. But as it is, we need help from creative artists.

You can read John Piper’s book Desiring God, its sequel When I Don’t Desire God, and a number of Piper’s other books online—free!

Here’s a quote from an unexpected source: How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler & Charles Van Doren. [now my secret's out, LOL!] This book is mostly about reading expository books analytically; by “imaginative literature” they mean anything that isn’t expository.

We owe much to the expository literature—the philosophy, science, mathematics—that has shaped the real world in which we live. But we could not live in this world if we were not able, from time to time, to get away from it. We do not mean that imaginative literature is always, or essentially, escapist. In the ordinary sense of that term, the idea is contemptible. If we must escape from reality, it should be to a deeper, or greater, reality. This is the reality of our inner life, of our own unique vision of the world. To discover this reality makes us happy; the experience is deeply satisfying to some part of ourselves we do not ordinarily touch. In any event, the rules of reading a great work of literary art should have as an end or goal just such a profound experience. The rules should clear away all that stops us from feeling as deeply as we possibly can….

The great majority of books that are read are stories of one kind or another. People who cannot read listen to stories. We even make them up for ourselves. Fiction seems to be a necessity for human beings. Why is this?

One reason why fiction is a human necessity is that it satisfies many unconscious as well as conscious needs. It would be important if it only touched the conscious mind, as expository writing does. But fiction is important, too, because it also touches the unconscious.

[from pages 205-206 and 220 of the 1972 edition]

Here is a link to an enchanting Russian animated short film called “Hedgehog in the Fog.”

The Hedgehog discovers the sublime wonder of the world by seeing it from an altered perspective (provided by the fog). Sometimes frightening, sometimes beautiful… transformed, and transformative.

I have heard one opinion that found the hedgehog character “dull.” Thinking about this, I believe it’s because he’s a more passive character than we’re used to… especially after generations of Western fiction writers have had it drummed into their heads that “protagonists must be active!” The Hedgehog does choose to enter the fog, though.

The animation is just lovely. I could watch this over and over.

Sensawundameter:

As created by Eva, who will enter you in a drawing if you leave a comment on her post, and as tagged by superfastreader.

Which book do you irrationally cringe away from reading, despite seeing only positive reviews?

The Bell Jar or anything else by Sylvia Plath. For one thing, I have a tendency to mistrust any author who committed suicide (yes, that includes Hemingway, and Freud most especially!), and everything I’ve read about Plath makes me think her works would just depress me.

If you could bring three characters to life for a social event (afternoon tea, a night of clubbing, perhaps a world cruise), who would they be and what would the event be?

Well, this isn’t very original, but I like it: Merry, Pippin, and Gandalf, to throw me a birthday party like Bilbo’s with tons of great Hobbit food and Gandalf’s fireworks.

(Borrowing shamelessly from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde): you are told you can’t die until you read the most boring novel on the planet. While this immortality is great for awhile, eventually you realise it’s past time to die. Which book would you expect to get you a nice grave?

I dunno, but I bet it would be a Harlequin romance. I started to read one once when I was a teen… you’d think with all the adolescent hormones, I would have gotten into it, but I couldn’t get past chapter 1.

Come on, we’ve all been there. Which book have you pretended, or at least hinted, that you’ve read, when in fact you’ve been nowhere near it?

It’s not exactly “nowhere near,” but I wrote papers on both Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy without having read more than a chapter or three… I simply ran out of time.

As an addition to the last question, has there been a book that you really thought you had read, only to realise when you read a review about it/go to ‘reread’ it that you haven’t? Which book?

I can’t recall any such occasion.

You’re interviewing for the post of Official Book Advisor to some VIP (who’s not a big reader). What’s the first book you’d recommend and why? (if you feel like you’d have to know the person, go ahead of personalise the VIP)

Hoo boy. That’s a toughie. Easier to think of nonfiction titles for that, than fiction. Let’s say the VIP is a woman. Then how about The Secret Life of Bees. I dunno, I’m just throwing it out there. It’s deep without being difficult to read.

A good fairy comes and grants you one wish: you will have perfect reading comprehension in the foreign language of your choice. Which language do you go with?

Mandarin Chinese. I know just enough to have an inkling of what I might be missing.

A mischievious fairy comes and says that you must choose one book that you will reread one a year for the rest of your life (you can read other books as well). Which book would you pick?

The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. It’ll leave me plenty of time for my other reading! (gotcha, mischievous fairy!)

I know that the book blogging community, and its various challenges, have pushed my reading borders. What’s one bookish thing you ‘discovered’ from book blogging (maybe a new genre, or author, or new appreciation for cover art-anything)?

Even though I have been aware of Gabriel Garcia Marquez for a long time, it was a discussion on superfastreader that finally impelled me to buy One Hundred Years of Solitude and start reading it. (Haven’t finished it yet, though!)

That good fairy is back for one final visit. Now, she’s granting you your dream library! Describe it. Is everything leatherbound? Is it full of first edition hardcovers? Pristine trade paperbacks? Perhaps a few favourite authors have inscribed their works? Go ahead-let your imagination run free.

When I lived in Wichita, there was an artist who always took out a booth at crafts fairs. He painted colorful scenes of cats and cat-sized dragons and books and wizards. I still remember one painting of a huge library that must have been three stories high, with balconies every dozen feet or so, ladders, the walls were nothing but bookcases. A little desk in the middle of the floor, and an easy chair, and a fireplace. And cats and little dragons sneaking about. I shoulda bought a print… wonder if I’ll ever see that artist’s work again? Of course I don’t remember his name!

Plus, I just love what superfastreader would ask for, I’ll just say “me too”:

I’m going to also add a touch of magic. Bookshelves that never run out of room. Books that never go missing. Books that are always available to lend out–even if they never come back, there’s always a copy available. And a magic clock, so I can stop the hands of time and steal an hour to read.

The Sensawunda quote of the week comes from Rachel Carson.

If I had influence with the Good Fairy, I would ask that her gift to each child be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.

My cousin had her baby today! Squeee!

And birth still boggles my mind. All of a sudden there’s a person, a unique human being, where there wasn’t one before.

 [Reports that superfastbaby can already read may be exaggerated.]

Sensawundameter: Pegged out

I do tend to gravitate toward novels based on fairy tales. Daughter of the Forest, by Juliet Marillier, is one of the better of that subgenre. It’s based on the folk tale “The Six Swans.”

The appropriate key moments have a true Grimm Brothers feel to them. The passages that have a more contemporary-fantasy feel to them don’t detract from that—the bardic voice holds for the most part.

The flaws were few but glaring. The slow beginning almost lost me; the protagonist was impossibly precocious; and the villains were over the top.

Still, once I slogged through that beginning and got into the meat of the story, it became less and less put-downable. I liked that it didn’t mess with the underlying fairy tale too much—it only expanded upon it. I’ve read other novels based on fairy tales that got all pop-psych with the supposed Freudian meaning of the fairy tale. Bleah.

I also liked that even though Marillier sets this in Ireland at a time when Christianity had only a toehold there, and the protagonist is a follower of the “old ways,” she doesn’t bash Christianity. In fact, the most prominent Christian character is a friend and helper.

Daughter of the Forest is book 1 of a trilogy, but it feels complete enough in itself that I just might veer off to some other book in my TBR stack rather than feeling compelled to dive straight into book 2. I like that. There’s enough to pique my interest (hm! wonder who the “Son of the Shadows” might be?) without having to have a blatant cliffhanger.

Sensawundameter:

Once or twice when I was a kid, Mom gave me a hard time for reading more than one book at a time. Well, Mom, I’m still doing it. Here’s what I’m reading now:

Juliet Marillier, Daughter of the Forest
Søren Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity
Julie Morgenstern, Making Work Work
Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle (audiobook)
Henry Ketcham, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (audiobook)
Not to mention assorted magazines and scanning the local newspaper.

I think it’s just that I don’t finish one thing quickly enough and get interested in the next thing. I don’t have any trouble keeping things straight, but I guess I’d have to say this might be a factor in it seeming like it takes forever for me to finish any one book.

Do you do this? Why or why not?

In memory of Madeleine L’Engle, who died on Sept. 6, here is a “sensawunda” quote from her marvelous book of essays, Walking on Water.

We don’t want to feel less when we have finished a book; we want to feel that new possibilities of being have been opened to us. We don’t want to close a book with the sense that life is totally unfair and that there is no light in the darkness; we want to feel that we have been given illumination.

In his novel The Traveler, John Twelve Hawks draws upon the very archetypes of wonder—and renders them banal.

To be fair, I had better disclose that I consumed this novel as an abridged audiobook. It’s possible that the abridgement process stripped out the beauty. It did remind me of The DaVinci Code, which I also listened to in abridged form.

Except John Twelve Hawks’s Wikipedia entry mentions that, because he’s such a recluse, people have speculated that he’s just a pen name for a known author—and Dan Brown was listed as a possibility. Twelve Hawks has specifically denied being Dan Brown. But this does suggest to me that the resemblance isn’t just an artifact of abridgment.

John Twelve Hawks seems to be a conspiracy-theory aficionado, so here’s my conspiracy theory: I think there’s a conspiracy among publishers who hawk [get it???] bestsellers. They’re taking the classic sources of sensawunda such as mythology, spirituality, and mysticism, and sucking them completely dry of all wonder and even interest (beyond the synthetic rhythm of formula suspense).

THAT is why his book reminded me of The DaVinci Code.

They both attempt to provide rational explanations for the transcendant. And the sad thing is, I think they both think they are adding wonder to the ancient traditions, with their tales of secret societies and centuries of war waged under the very noses of unsuspecting Muggles (oops, wrong genre).

Twelve Hawks makes a big deal of living “off the Grid,” as if he really believes in the Matrix (which he calls the Vast Machine—he even managed to make that banal). I can’t help wondering how far off the Grid he really is if he’s able to tap into the trend started by Dan Brown, but that’s neither here nor there. Again, it seems to be another attempt on his part to add sensawunda. But he only succeeds in making himself look like a Howard Hughes with no sense of style.