Diamond rings and babies toes
I think I know a few people who have grown up without growing old. They're a lovely sight in a world that is becoming decrepit. James Gustaffson has marvellously taught us that we lose our child-likeness and the enchanted world as we progress to technological maturity and rationality but that we comfort ourselves with the notion that we can induce enchantment and control our rationality with a stiff shot of booze.
It can't be wrong to look for rationality and technological maturity but it can make such a wreck of the world if all magic and mystery is obliterated. Try telling a newly engaged woman that the diamond on her finger is a piece of pure carbon crystallized in octahedrons under pressure ranging from 45 to 60 kilobars and having a cubic atom formation. To see no meaning of a rainbow because you care only about its physical properties is to miss more than you know. To take the mystery out of everything is not only (ultimately) impossible—it's attempted robbery. To so speak and act and set an agenda meaning to utterly destroy mystery and wonder is an ill wind that withers everything in a rational big freeze. People become consumers, children become targets in the marketing game and your neighbour is someone you can sell something to. Our "highest thoughts" as one "wise" man noted are nothing but chemical reactions. We sense that this is going on and can't completely live with it so we create lands of enchantment like Disneyland or read the astrological pages or hug trees.
G.K Chesterton had much to say about all that "progress" towards maturity. He always insisted that what was wrong with the world was that we have grown old and God has stayed young.
You've seen a baby discovering it toes, haven't you—isn't that a sight to behold? Is it difficult for you to imagine that one day you might walk into a room and there sits God and a little baby both round-eyed and lost in wonder? It is? Hmmm.
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.