Without a Sense of Wonder, Nothing Makes Sense
Let Spring Day remind you of the mystery
Today is the beginning of spring for the southern hemisphere, when nature draws on the power of winter's death, and bursts forth in life.
It is something so basic that it becomes mundane for us.
We forget that because our earth is tilted on an axis, and is flying around a huge burning ball of gas, seasons change as the hemispheres get closer and farther away from the rays of light flying through empty space.
In the old days of paganism, people understood the world was a huge mystery. That's why they had all these rituals to do with death and resurrection, spring time and harvest, bread and wine. They knew in their hearts that life was a riddle which could never be wholly solved.
We've forgotten this. We think we know everything, but real wisdom lies in knowing how much you do not know.
We go about our daily lives, thinking each day is just another boring day in which nothing happens. And we forget the sheer fact that anything exists at all is an earth-shattering enigma. We forget we live in this world of love, pain, and glory, and it is all such a mystery.
We take things like family, gravity, oxygen, light, water, and plants all for granted. We live in this absolute fairyland and we think fairy tales are just make-believe.
If we were more conscious of the mystery and glory all around us, how would our perspective on life change?
Would we dare to believe in the immortality of the soul, that there is something bigger than making money and just getting by?
Would we avoid getting sucked into the trap of believing that all our little struggles are the end of the world?
It's time to learn another Greek word: aletheia, which means 'unforgetting'. We need to unforget the magic of existence.
As Chesterton once put it, "A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish."
One of the reasons I love the films of Terrence Malick is his great urgency to see the world again, to unforget its mystery.
I think this is what he is attempting to do in this new documentary of the entire world, which is narrated by Brad Pitt.
Enjoy this trailer on your Spring Day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlWe_YcBWDY