the year of wonder and amazement

I’ve been trying something out (working on something?) for this year, 2014. If you’ve been around me, you might have heard me talk about it, because I’m sure I’ve been a bit unbearable. I’ve decided that, for me anyone who chooses to join me, 2014 will be The Year of Wonder and Amazement. I recently had the privilege of talking a bit about these ideas to the wonderful and amazing youth group at my church, and I thought I would take a few minutes to use that as a framework to try to explain a bit further what this special year-long observance means to me.

Last year I read several books by a thinker and theologian named Walter Brueggemann. I’ll write a little more about him a bit later, but for now it will suffice to say that one of his ideas is that the way that most of us live is a way that discourages even belief in the possibility of the truly wonderful and amazing. That idea was rattling around in my head when I was watching one of my favorite current shows, The Middle.

In that episode, the character named Sue (my favorite!) gave the following speech:

There are so many beautiful, amazing things that happen every day that sound crazy. Think about it, if I had to explain the miracle of how babies are born to someone who didn’t know, wouldn’t I sound insane? Stars. I read that when a star explodes, the dust they find is the same thing that makes up humans, animals, the entire universe! How amazing is that? The same stardust is in everything and everyone: Me, you, even Christopher Columbus! You know, in his day, some people still thought the world was flat. Columbus said it was round, and people thought he was crazy. Look, I know there’s always going to be doubters, but it just takes someone who thinks ‘Why can’t it be true?’ to truly change the world, and I am one of those people. So how can you sit there on this planet made of stardust that was once thought to be flat, and still not think that anything is possible?

Those words really resonated with me, and with the ideas that were already swimming in my head. Brueggemann proposes that there are two stories that we have to choose from. The first is the dominant story that most of us have embedded in us from the time we’re born. It’s the story we live in. It’s the story of the American Dream and the Rugged Individual. Brueggemann uses the words consumeristic, therapeutic, technological, and militaristic to describe the dominant story. It’s a story that tells us that we can solve all of our problems on our own, and that we have to solve all of our problems on our own. It’s a story in which too much is never enough, because you never know when you are going to lose the ability to make or find more. It’s a story where you are forced to be constantly producing. The dominant story presents us with smoke and mirrors to make us think that we are amazed, but the truth is that we’re just being presented with one shiny thing after another that will be obsolete sooner rather than later. The dominant story actually doesn’t leave any room for true wonder and amazement, because what can be accomplished is limited to the things that we can personally accomplish and sustain.

The second story is an alternate story where we can depend on something other than our own strength and ingenuity. The miraculous is truly possible. We are not confined to what we can conceive. The alternate story is one that requires the active use of our imaginations. Brueggemann writes:

The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing. The same royal consciousness that makes it possible to implement anything and everything is the one that shrinks imagination because imagination is a danger.

For Brueggemann, and for me, the key to the alternative story is that it is the one where God is active and the central focus. I believe that God is active in the world and so anything is possible. And for me to believe that God is active in the world, and that God came as a man, and that Jesus returned from the dead, I have to believe that wonderful and amazing things are possible. Without the wonderful and amazing, those things can’t happen.

Hopefully I will find the energy and time to get a little more into some more of the theology behind some of these ideas later, but for now I will just say that I have two main goals for The Year of Wonder and Amazement. The first is to look for the wonderful and amazing in my life. I am a child of the dominant story. I am prone to grumble and complain and be cynical. But even the mundane things in life are packed with the wonderful and amazing. My wonder and amazement receptors have been dulled by all the systems that we’ve constructed around us, so I need practice. The second goal is just to bear witness to the fact that the capacity exists for wonder and amazement. Those things are possible. I think that regardless of religious affiliation, there aren’t many people who couldn’t use reminding of that fact, and there aren’t many people for whom the existence of wonder and amazement could not be good news.

So please feel free to join me, no matter what your faith is or isn’t. I’m going to be looking for the wonderful and amazing all around me all year long, and trying to point those things out to anybody else who is inclined to listen. I’ve started a twitter account to try to keep us on track, @14AnnMirabilis. I don’t promise any regular posting schedule, but hopefully we’ll get stuff up there pretty regularly. If you have anything that we need to share, please send it along.