Re-Enchanting the World
The path forward in a disenchanted world
The world has never been more disenchanted...
Take a walk out in public. Look around. What do you see? People going about their business. People on their phones. People that have never been more connected, while simultaneously never more disconnected. Those people are us. We are cut off from each other. We are separated from the past, and clueless to the future. Blind to the larger story unfolding all around us. We live like a ball in a pinball machine, knocked around by invisible forces. All the while wishing for a life of meaning and purpose but seemingly doomed to repeat the cycle.
We distract ourselves from the emptiness with subjective goals. Academic success, career achievement, financial pursuits. But the emptiness always lurks behind, ready to consume us in the quiet moments. We push away the silence with entertainment and pleasure, but it always returns. The emptiness stalks us. It hunts us like the boogie-man. A monster from which we can never escape.
The emptiness bears one other similarity to the boogie-man- it’s not real. It is imaginary. It is born of a lie we have been sold. The lie is this: we are mere particles in motion- bugs on a rock floating through the vast abyss of space, all just trying to survive. How could anything matter on such a view? It couldn’t. There could be no goodness. No truth. No beauty. And that’s where the emptiness we feel comes from. The lie. A lie whose effects cannot simply be dispelled by denunciation. It permeates our modern culture. It is the soup we swim in. Its poisonous fog has to some extent clouded the vision of even the most resilient among us.
There is a way out of this toxic cloud. A way for us all to truly live. It’s not a magic pill or a secret trick. It is a process of healing our perception. A restoration of vision. A renewal of the mind. A transformative journey of which we can only be certain of the first step.
What is this first step? It is the enemy of the first sin- humility.
The humility to believe that we are not it. We are not all there is. There is something more. Something beyond. Something that transcends the natural world.
Throughout history great thinkers and artists have attempted to put language to this. Philosophy, theology, art, literature, music etc. All attempts to somehow bring the divine into view. To capture the transcendent and put it on display for us all to see.
We may never fully see in our natural lives. This journey of healing our perception leads to a destination that is unattainable this side of eternity.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” -Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 13:12)
A helpful classification that has emerged from these great thinkers over the centuries is the idea of the transcendental categories; beauty, truth, and goodness. These are things that could not exist if the material world was all that existed. These transcendentals are infused within the created order. A constant reflector of our Creator.
“The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”- G.K. Chesterton
In a world starving for want of wonder, nihilism abounds. Almost every bad thing you can think of is downstream of that- depression, crime, suicide, etc. All things that are on the rise in modernity. They are fueled by their close benefactors- relativism & subjectivism. All growing from the soil of a lack of wonder. The dense fog of the modern lie that blinds us from seeing the world for that which it is- true, good, and beautiful.
The goal of this publication is to play some small part in reversing that. To re-enchant us with the beauty of the world. Not to instill some sense of false hope, but to see reality clearly so that we can live purposefully with our eyes wide open.
Each week we will explore stories, people, art, and places- historical and literary- that help us recover a vision of the true, good, and beautiful.
Help Re-Enchant
If this project resonates with you- if you sense that the world is more meaningful than we are often told- then please consider subscribing.
Your support helps make this work possible and allows this publication to grow in depth and reach. If you find value here, please consider becoming a supporting subscriber. Together, we can help to re-enchant the world!