Wonder Springs

04/August/2010 09:00 Filed in: Weekly Column
Volume 12, Issue 31

>>PDF copy
>>Print copy

Today I am going to tell you what is wrong with this country, and the world for that matter. Then I am going to tell you again, and then perhaps again in another way, and then we will be done.

We humans everywhere have lost our sense of wonder. If the rest of the animals on this earth, perhaps the plants too, could, or can wonder, they would wonder what is wrong with the human species, they have lost their sense of wonder about everything, about life.

Truly we bitch and moan, belittle and bloviate, prophesy and procrastinate, worry and fret, whine and are stubbornly unhappy about a whole world of trivial things. Things, things everywhere, so much so that thing obsession has become both our religion and our way of life. To make matters worse we no longer have the time to wonder why things seem so wrong, when we hoped that things would be so right.

The good news is that wonder springs from the totally mundane. But the thing we need to learn again is that wonder is only possible because of the existence of the transcendent. We have become so materially blessed that we really are of no earthly good. In the process we have become so self centered that we have lost our sense of faith in anything we cannot physically touch. Oue recent problems stem from the reality that we are limited beings and just can’t touch an infinite world without some help and we are too insecure to even know were to ask for help.

We can be thankful however that wonder springs from death and the impossible.

And God said, “I wonder what kind of world those humans will create if I make them in my image?”

Of course God knew the outcome, and that was, and is, we would attempt to become mortal gods; attempting to recreate a world in our collective image. God knew that we would fail and eventually we would need some help, not to become God, but to be forced to become still, and therefore know the transcendence of the wonder of it all; the humility that comes from the knowledge that there is a God, that he loves us, and has completed a reality of redemption through Jesus Christ.

About four years ago I was looking for a new name for my writings, for the then title of “Chronicles of Diversity” had become so politically correct that it could no longer be used to describe the true diversity of God’s creation. For some reason I was reading some old article or document, about something and somewhere, and within the explanation of the why-for, the author stated that “wonder springs” from, and in the most in opportune times. Wonder springs — essentially from the time and place we least expect it.

Even I was smart enough to understand that this talk of “wonder springs of human transcendence” could actually relate to an actual place called Wonder Springs. Doing an extensive Internet search the only true Wonder Springs I could find in the whole world, existed in Death Valley, California. There were a Wonder Spring, here and there, really only in the United States, but only one Death Valley located Wonder Springs.

So I had my new title, and new website. The problem was that we were so content with our contentedness that nobody thought we really needed wonder springs at all; life was good, and we were masters of our own human centered destiny. But things are changing.

Over the last few days, one of my email groups has been discussing a Baby Boomer Test. Question 5 in that test goes:

5. You'll wonder where the yellow went...
A. When you use Tide.
B. When you lose your crayons.
C. When you clean your tub.
D. If you paint the room blue.
E. If you buy a soft water tank.
F. When you use Lady Clairol.
G. When you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.

Of course the real answer is: G. When you brush your teeth with Pepsodent.

Getting back to a real Wonder Springs, while not really using the Death Valley example, the Boomer folk group the Kingston Trio gave us the famous Desert Pete in this YouTube link.



Chorus:
You've got to prime the pump.
You must have faith and believe.
You've got to give of yourself 'fore you're worthy to receive.
Drink all the water you can hold.
Wash your face to your feet.
Leave the bottle full for others.
Thank you kindly, Desert Pete.

All of this pretty much takes us back to the good old days of 1963 when all we had to worry about was the Cold War and nuclear destruction at the hands of those bad communists of the Soviet Union. The Cuban Missile Crisis was just recent history and Vietnam was just the thorn in the flesh of President Kennedy.

Of course wonder is making an emergence, just as we write this. In the aftermath of, “The greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the United States!” everyone is now wondering where all the oil went in the gulf.

Well as a result of all of our negative vibes, we were led to believe that the sky was falling and the world was about to end. However back in “Chaos in American Energy; and the world suffers” on 21 June we said that the microbes in the warm gulf waters would make quick work of the problem.” Put in today’s context, while we wonder about the resilience of nature, perhaps we should wonder why we are such a desperate world of grumpy people?

The reality of our shallow and troubling world is it really is a shallow and troubling world of our own creation. All, or our best plans, with the best intentions, are turning out to be chaotic dung, because we limit our world to the limits of our own incompetence.

This is really nothing new, but in a vain effort to provide for our own glory, we like our predecessors, refuse to learn from history, and so repeat that history, always searching, but never taking the time for knowledge to be refined into wisdom.

The United States of America is truly a unique creation in mankind’s history of the world, because like no other we were created by the grace of God working through human instruments, sort of a Desert Pete country. By that I mean we have our roots firmly planted in the fertile soil of works righteousness, individual works righteousness.

Today however, we have become a nation of collective righteousness. Our solutions are no longer based upon the whole context of the Bible, but rather the human desires of Babel and Babylon. What we are currently experiencing is the confusion of that collective ego, as described in Genesis 11. English has become the language of world commerce, and contrary to our most strident efforts to move in the opposite direction, the American dollar still is the world’s basic currency.

Just as with Babel we have created a Babylon without God where we worship ourselves, and where we believe that any transcendence is some primitive evolutionary vestigial myth. In the process however we still in the depth of our hearts wonder why it isn’t as cool as we hoped it would be. Condensing the last century, our hope in change seems to have run its course and we wonder how to get it back. The problem being, we have limited are search to which our limited worldview acquiesces.

But when you look at the reality of humanity, we are still a religious personality, wrapped in the body of skin and bones. With all our efforts to create a world without a strong influence of God, all we are really doing is attempting to create a self-fulfilling religion of personal apostasy, which ultimately leads to total despair and chaos. When we reach that level, only then can we cry out “Oh God!” and be surprised that in all the noise, the peace and quiet ascend. In the process Wonder Springs from within Death Valley and life takes a different turn.

Beyond all the hype that we don’t have to go there, we have been gifted to live that Death Valley opportunity. Once we taste the water from that spring we again can transcendently believe that wonder springs from what looks so desolate. Then we can begin to redux that ancient understanding that life where wonder springs, is what life is all about.
Podcast

Tags: , , , , ,