Don’t Forget About Wonder

I was out in the backyard at night sometime during my tweens — I don’t even remember why. I was probably trying to get the dog in or something similarly mundane, but I just happened to look up.

And it just hit me. The sky was sprinkled with stars, and it was dark enough that they stood out clearly. In that moment, I felt tiny. Absolutely miniscule.

I felt that way again when I was sixteen. Our family went to the Carlsbad Caverns on vacation. Boy, if you want to be in awe of God’s creation, that’s a good place to go. You enter through a huge cave mouth gaping up out of the ground and start winding down switchbacking stairs. Slowly, your eyes adjust — and then you look up. I’ve never felt quite a thrill of awe like that. The ceiling was impossibly high, exquisitely textured, dotted with stalagtites and holes and ledges and mysterious shadows.

And then, you look down. And far, far away you see the itty-bitty lights of the walkway, but mostly it’s lumpy shapes and black nothingness, and just when you’re sure you’re getting close to the bottom, more rock cuts away and you realize it just keeps going. We saw signs saying you could stick the Empire State Building inside the Carlsbad Caverns. Oh yeah. Easily.

My first thought was quite contrary to what they’d told us at the top — that is, to not make a noise above a whisper, for fear of dislodging some tenuously-hanging rock. But I wanted to shout. I wanted to hear the echo. I wished there were piano keys under my fingers or a violinist nearby so I could hear haunting tones in that absolutely epic space. I could only imagine how gorgeous music would be echoing through narrow little tunnels and then out and up into that natural ampitheater.

And that was merely the mouth of the cave.

It was about an hour’s walk down to the ‘rooms.’ And literally everything along the way was cool. When you think about the fountains under the earth mentioned in the Flood account, that place has got to be one of the locations where unimaginable amounts of water rocketed up.

All along the way, there were crazy formations. Some looked wet and slick. Others were craggy and bizarrely contorted. I would have so loved to touch it all. My curiosity, my awe, my sense of wonder was absolutely piqued.

Then we came to one of the rooms. The footpath loops in a wide circle around this plain of craters, stalagmites, and holes. Oh, the holes.

Yes, holes.

Over one is suspended the remains of a flimsy rope ladder, used by some of the first folks who found the place. The railing stops pretty close to the edge. I walked over and looked down.

Blame it on an author’s imagination, but one of the first things I thought about was falling down. Falling, falling, falling into that blackness that went on for who knew how long. I knew it would be a lot. There were holes in the ceiling down here that I knew let out near where we’d started. I wondered what would be at the bottom. Fossils? The remains of some native who’d long, long ago put his foot in the wrong place? A big black well like that really makes one connect with The Silver Chair or mythical pictures of the underworld.

In both of those instances, both under the night sky and exploring the caverns, I felt wonder, amazement, a sense of ‘wow.’ It was curiosity — a yearning to touch and understand, mixed with smallness, and not a little fear. After all, the railing came up to my waist. I am a terribly clumsy person. The ground was wet. You connect the dots. 😁

I like things I can’t understand. Specifically things about God’s creation. I like trying to understand them and then feeling, what an amazing work. I believe the writer ought to cultivate wonder in their lives. Ther writer ought to always be in awe of God’s creation — be it the beauty of natural landscapes, such as the slot canyons that inspired Brandon Sanderson, or the baffling, complicated epitome of His creation, AKA people. To me, I think the very fact of being a fiction writer means it’s kinda hard to deny the immaterial. While reading Sanderson’s Tress of the Emerald Sea, my rhythm was cut short by a joke Hoid made, referring to curiosity and fear and what its beginnings must have been like in the Neanderthal age.

Huh, I thought. Sanderson — Mormon, writer of all kinds of crazy-complicated, fantastical worlds often complete with detailed spiritual systems — seems to be swinging towards materialism.

How can the fiction writer be materialist? How can the fiction writer imagine — a very important part of his trade — if the things his brain comes up with are merely neurons firing and atoms crashing into each other. What purpose have those ideas? What worth have they?

I don’t understand how those that promote a materialistic worldview can answer for imagination. After all, imagination isn’t something we experience with the five senses. Neither is conscience. And yet both clearly exist. Every person has them. Can they be tainted? Sure. But they still exist. Heck, we would be nowhere without imagination. No one would have imagined anything better than animal skins for clothes and caves for homes. And it just doesn’t add up that the universe somehow decided to send imaginations to its little accidents so they could start developing, exploring, and inventing.

If we understand that we were made in the image of a Creator God, imagination makes perfect sense. In order to create, we have to first visualize or have some sort of understanding of what we want to create, some picture of more than that which can be experienced with the five senses.

Really, how do materialists account for invention and progressions in technology? We know that many of the prominent Christian scientists who developed and operated under the scientific method did so because they believed that God had created an orderly world. An orderly, complex, and designed world, that one could discover in and create in. But say a materialist had come across the ingredients of gunpowder. Why would he bother to combine them, let alone try setting them on fire? His senses tell him ‘this is just funny-colored dirt.’ If we don’t believe in a special world designed for us, designed with all the wisdom and brilliance and sheer creativity of God, why are we even curious? Why aren’t we satisfied with things as we see them?

Because something in the human nature knows there is more to this world than meets the eye, that’s why.

Things just don’t exist. They were created by a Good God who is infinitely powerful and infinitely creative, and because He is so much greater, we can marvel at His deeds, thus experiencing wonder.

On another trip, this time to Oregon, I found a leaf on a hike the size of my head. Oregon is gorgeous and green along the coast and things grow like you wouldn’t believe. Now, one could look at that leaf one of two ways. Either, ‘hey, big leaf.’ Or, ‘wow, that’s a big leaf.’

Wow.

Astonishment. Admiration. Wonder.

But why admire if it’s just a cosmic accident? I mean, unless you’re marveling at the ridiculously-impossible odds evolution would have you believe in, there’s no reason to be in awe of something that doesn’t have purpose or meaning.

What so strikes me about the more subtle themes in Sanderson’s works is often how close he is. Sometimes he will say something or hint something that makes me think, ‘yes! Yes, don’t you see?‘ The next moment, the story falls again into materialism.

Which is, quite frankly, both sad and ridiculous. Sanderson is massively talented, and I would love for him to be saved. I am also not at all dissing his work, something I have great admiration and respect for. His work and characters inspire me — in large part because I come at them from a Christian worldview. But to the materialist, why should characters like Kaladin bother with honor or selflessness? For self-gratification? So they can sleep at night? Well how depressing is that?

We read stories — and more accurately we want heroes — because we want to see good win. Of course, the materialist doesn’t believe in good or evil. Then how can the materialist write? How can the materialist write a story that edifies us if we can’t identify a hero or find any meaning in having read the book?

You see this with Disney. This is in part why it’s going downhill. Politics and LGBTQ+ characters aside, when you think that good and evil are societal constructs, your story is immediately ineffective. Even so early as Pirates of the Caribbean we see this. Are we ever really rooting for Jack Sparrow? We are if him winning means a win for the virtuous Will Turner or Elizabeth Swan. But quite strictly, he’s a rogue and a vagabond, and we know we oughtn’t be rooting for someone like that. In those movies, ‘good’ is pretty much whatever favors the heroes — and in fact, as the story goes on, even the initially pure-hearted couple begins taking worse and worse steps. And we’re kinda expected to go along with it.

I’ve swerved off-topic a little bit, but understanding good and evil is key to understanding wonder. We can’t marvel at this world without understanding that, a) God created it, and b) He called it good. An accident, a morphing of slime into cell structures, that can’t be good. It just exists. So why be amazed at it?

Consequently, if all that exists is what we can experience with the five senses, why write — or read? Why create a fictional world, fictional characters, fictional problems, in order to leave your readers with an emotion or message, or transport them to another world? It’s folly and escapism then, isn’t it? If so, how are writers any better than drug dealers — willfully selling soothing self-deception?

On the other hand, if we understand that stories point us beyond the temporal, if they reflect the true nature of this world both physical and spiritual, then that accounts for our fascination with them, and the purpose for creating them. Stories stick in our heads. Good triumphing over evil resonates with us. But if our imaginations and memories are randomly-firing neutrons and good and evil are constructs, well it all falls to pieces, doesn’t it?

This is a long post, and I apologize. I will get to the point. Wonder, like imagination, is something that the materialistic worldview cannot account for. Wonder, like imagination, is something that is necessary for the fiction writer, for things that make us wonder often prove the best inspiration and remind our readers of the true state of things. Wonder, like imagination, is a glorious gift from God, and like a particularly well-written book, can make us marvel, can make us whisper ‘hallelujah,’ can remind us of the Great God we serve and the inexplicable love He has for us. Think about it — the God who is outside of time, the God who makes things like the White Cliffs of Dover or bamboo jungles or massive manta rays or gigantic balls of fiery gas, that God… decided to become an embryo. A helpless newborn. A bumbling toddler. If that isn’t wondrous, the fact that He loved us enough to connect with us insignificant specks in such a way, I don’t know what is.

After all, compared to the grandeur and size of those caverns in Carlsbad, I am an ant. I’m tiny. If not for rails, paths, and lights, nature — or rather my clumsiness — would have its way and snuff my life out in a blink.

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,

What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
 For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

Psalm 8:3-5, New King James Version

When you understand that God is a God of purpose, order, and meaning, and that He deeply loves the vulnerable things called humans, then you can best write your own meaningful stories, and understand just how God thinks of you and your reader.

As Junius Johnson and Steve Laube reminded me at a conference this year, we don’t create wonder. The writer cannot, does not create, not in the ex nihilo sense. He or she reflects, rearranges those marvelous, God-given things called ‘words’ in order that the light of the Source can be seen a little clearer. Not that it is, mind you, hard to see at all, but we are a rather blind species. Find that wonder, look for that wonder, and reflect it.

Wonder also requires humility. Our culture squelches that and imagination both, and if you want to get anywhere as a writer, you need to fight it. Look up, and look deeper. Further up and further in. (Credit goes to Mr. Johnson for much of these last few paragraphs. I was scribbling notes like a madwoman throughout most of his session.) Look for wonder, let yourself be amazed. And even if you do try to apprehend it, my fellow analytical minds, know that you never will, and that’s okay. In fact, it’s good. We finite, time-bound humans were never meant for total comprehension. If we knew all about God, if we could comprehend Him, well then, He wouldn’t be God.

I know I can’t tell you to feel something. In fact, coaxing up that massive, overwhelming feeling called wonder is downright impossible. But, my dear reader, when wonder happens to you, let it. Don’t try to explain it away. Don’t assure yourself that you’re a smart human and you have nothing to fear. God’s world is big and scary and awesome, and that’s because He created it. Those house-rattling thunderstorms one gets during early summer nights have just an infinitely small fraction of the power of their Creator. And He, no matter what you do, will never, ever stop loving you. I hope you remember that. The next time you say ‘wow,’ remember the God who made you able to feel that wonder, get an idea, and then scramble to find somewhere to scribble it down for your next story.

Have a lovely week. Cheers.