A return to wonder (Lucinda Franks / Ed Simon)

Christmas in Bethlehem…
A cold, clear night made brilliant
by a glorious star, the smell of incense,
shepherds and wise men falling to their knees
in adoration of the sweet baby,
the incarnation of perfect love.

 --Lucinda Franks

   What would appear to be a humble human birth is at the same time holy and miraculous, with animals laid down before the Lord, and the star of Bethlehem guiding the Magi to Christ’s cradle. 

   To wonder is to dwell in amazement, surprise and the miraculous. One can experience wonder when meditating upon the magnitude of the universe, or in contemplating Blake’s poetry or art. Wonder is when we apprehend the sublime and the magnificent in what we encounter every day, with both humility and delight. The wonder in the Christmas story is that something as human as a baby could also be something as foreign as God. 

   In thinking about the meaning of the nativity today, I find its most potent and radical message to be one not just of wonder, but of wonder as means of approaching difference, of experiencing and understanding the Other. As God, Christ is supposed to be radically foreign, but as Jesus he is intimately human. The theology of incarnation explains that union’s tension, but the broader philosophical implications concern how love must be inculcated by wonder at this paradox. The philosopher Simon Critchley, describing the contours for a “faith of the faithless,” writes that “Christ is the incarnation of love as an act of imagination… the imaginative projection of love onto all creatures.” 

   Wonder is the antidote to hatred, for wonder is fundamentally radical. Had Herod any sense of wonder for the exquisite singularity of all people, would the massacre of the innocents have commenced? If we had wonder at the individual universe that is each fellow human, at the cosmic complexity of other people, would we put refugees in cages? 

   We do not have to look far into the current state of the world to realize that this time requires a return to wonder — what I would call a “politics of wonder,” predicated on both empathy and celebration of difference. Those of us, religious believers or not, who understand the profound meaning of the nativity must fight on behalf of wonder and in the service of a future society that places wonder at its very center. 

--Ed Simon, “In Praise of Wonder”

Blessings at Christmas from
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley!

Image source 1: https://ncbaptist.org/article/seeing-christmas-through-the-eyes-of-a-child/
Image source 2: Christmas Crèche, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Mill Valley, https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=779997194165697&set=a.770843431747740
Quotation source 1
Quotation source 2