Chesterton ws a great thinker, but prone to making sweeping generalizations. Not all of us are perishing for want of wonder. Some of us see God’s miraculous truth, beauty and goodness in such every-day things as a flower.

There is another quote of his that makes me smile:

“Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.” [3]
Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton
Some days I do perish, and thank you Father Campbell for the reminder.

You know, a person could spend an eternity delving into the gems and the words of wisdom in your Blog. That fills me with wonder and gratitude for having discovered “People For Others.”

RRJM

I do beleve that the ultimate way in which we relate to the world as something sacred is by renewing our sense of wonder but more importantly a sense of humility. That can happen so spontaneously when we are in contact with the natural world or in the presence of great art or music, or often when we see a child at play or a skilled person performing. Then we are reduced to speechless wonder and language is not adequate to describe the experience.
I love that saying “Where there is no vision the people will perish “. There is no common vision in this world and that is because we are all looking in different directions . Wonder is more about seeing humanity does not have the answers- and we need to renew a sense of transcendence in our lives and that is what the churches need to engender in us again to renew wonder. Aristotle said that philosophy begins with a sense of wonder – perhaps many in the West have become so narcissistic we have only a wonder at ourselves. In the scene of the Transfiguration the disciples experienced wonder and they did not want the experience to end. I am thankful for those times in my life when I have been lucky to have experienced the joy of wonder but it is something I don’t think we can experience for long because it we have to come back and deal with reality.
I often imagine that heaven must be living in wonder permanently !!

I was reading a book on finding God in the desert recently and it reminded me of a time at which I truly lacked wonder. It was the mid 70s and I was living in Phoenix, AZ. I was not fond of the desert. A friend invited me for a walk in “North Mountain Park”. When I heard “park” I thought of grass and trees. North Mountain Park is a desperately barren hill. I was disappointed. As we climbed the hill, I sudden stopped to look at a tiny flower growing all by itself. Its leafless stem was about an inch long and thin as the tiniest needle. It had lovely red-orange petals, together about a quarter of an inch in diameter. I stared at this little thing of beauty for a really long time. But I interpreted the flower as proof of how ugly the desert is because I was so desperate for something to look at I settled for this tiny flower. I wish I had Chesterton’s statement in my head at the time, or Ignatius’ “Finding God In All Things” as I should have. Now more than 30 years later I know that the tiny flower was as great a wonder as rhododendron shrub in full bloom or a giant California redwood. The desert too is a wonder because only in the desert would I have seen the flower. I ask my loving God for the sense of wonder that Chesterton spoke of so that I may more readily recognize God’s presence in many, many more things.