Loveliness

If you asked me on different days why I was a Christian, you would get different answers.

I’ve never had a problem with that.  People are complicated.  They have different reasons for doing things, some of which are paradoxical.  The demand for a uniform rationality is not usually a sign of health, any more than a pure emotional reaction without any consideration.  In fact, on some days when you ask why I’m a believer, this complexity will be the answer – I find that the faith accounts for the paradoxes of life and of humanity far more comprehensively than any alternative.

Today, though, if you ask – and I’m going to proceed as if you did – the answer is not about complexity, but imagination.

Sometimes I think that the everyday world is just a little too mundane to be the only thing we’re meant for.  Whatever man touches, he adorns; where he finds beauty in nature or motion, he is quick to praise and admire.  I grow convinced that this impulse of imagination and wonder is a key that opens a small window to greater things, and that someday a secret door, long suspected but rarely recognized, will be opened to us.

Of course, Wonka’s world took a lot of practical doing – set builders, architects and engineers, confectioners (remember, half of this stuff is edible), the actual work of composing the song and lyrics, recording, playing, and then lighting, staging, and filming.  And that’s just for us to gawk at it.  If this were a real thing, you’d have pretty much that entire list, along with the added concerns of a legitimate industry in the business of making, marketing, packaging, shipping, and selling candy.  It’s more of that paradox – wonder can be hard work.  Hard work, in turn, can be wonderful.

One more.  This was uncovered by Don at Zoopraxiscope, and is perfectly lovely.

It captures the dream-logic completely.  Who?  Why?  It doesn’t matter.  Just go.

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