Last week I had a moment of enlightenment. A friend of mine is attending grad school with English as her second language, and I was proofreading a paper for her. Explaining that she is “realistic,” she wrote, “I do not live in the wonderland.” I couldn’t help laughing, and immediately thought, “I do! I live in the wonderland!” Ever since it has been an overused joke, and she takes me by the shoulders and shakes me, yelling “Wake up!” The truth of the point remains: I really do live in the wonderland. However, that in itself does not make much sense, so please allow me to elaborate.
It All Starts With Hope
Hope is a glorious paradox to me, because without Christ we have hope in absolutely nothing; yet when we hope in Him, hope seems to envelop everything else too. It is then quite right to say He is the cornerstone: without Christ nothing can stand, but with Him castles can. Of course, even a castle is nothing but for the Prince who reigns in it. The very world itself is my wonderland now.
If all of history is God's story, then every moment of our lives is part of a plot, and has meaning and beauty. Even sunshine spotting through the trees is not a chemical reaction, it is God's artwork creating an interactive backdrop for the enchanted story of our lives.
But Wait, It's 2016....
Perhaps you are a bit hesitant at this point, if you have been living in 2016. It may appear that I have buried my head in my own personal sandcastle — our world is a mess, a mess beyond words. We all have vastly different opinions on the mess, but the one thing that we can agree upon is that there is indeed a mess. Rest assured, I see the mess too. That is precisely why the wonderland is important. Without it, we see only the mess — what matters more is the big picture. The bigger our mess, the bigger our "big" picture needs to be.
Fairy-Tales Are Important
What I love about fairy-tales and many stories in general is the context. With context everything is magical. Cinderella may be covered in ashes, slaving away in a damp kitchen basement, miserably treated by people who tread on her to lift themselves up. We feel for her, we feel appropriate emotions at her state, but never is there a moment without giddy anticipation. Never does that damp basement leave the context of magic and romance. We know the ending, and we know that the dark parts of her story, no matter how dark, only serve to highlight her glorious redemption, which is just around the corner. They are the minor chords to her song, without which it would simply be saccharin sweet.
In Snow White, we do not despair, even when she tastes the apple (which is oh so symbolic). We feel bad for those who do despair, but we ourselves are filled with anticipation for True Love’s Kiss. What made those princesses beautiful was that they had a sort of faith, and even when they faltered, love did not.
Context Is King...Not Just For Hermaneutics
Who could fathom this world without its context? My heart goes out to them, just like the dwarves looking on Snow White’s sleeping body, or like Cinderella weeping in the garden. But I know how this story ends — that no matter how bad things get now, the Prince will redeem, good will triumph over evil, True Love will prevail against all odds, and happily ever after is coming. The Gospel tells us the same thing, only in more concrete terms — the battle is won, and the ending is eternally set. The Prince died to save his bride, and nothing will stop him from claiming her. I think I can scrub a few more floors with that knowledge.
A Little Bit of Chesterton
Chesterton beautifully elaborates on the need for the magical in his book ‘Orthodoxy.’ He explains that overextended logic and the realm of cold-hard-facts are not actually conducive to “sanity.” Chesterton explains,
“Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason….The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head, and it is his head that splits.”
In his chapter, ‘The Ethics of Elfland,’ he writes
“The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud…The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things…Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth…All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.”
What is it that we have forgotten? I believe we have forgotten that this is the dream. We have forgotten that true reality is so much grander and more glorious than this realm we are in, and that it is absolutely crucial that we find true reality.
That is why I live in the wonderland, and I can only aspire for the compliment Chesterton paid to Dryden,
“It would have been hard to find a man more romantic than he, or more sensible.”
Applying The Wonderland
Right now, things are bleak. I hold my breath and nearly shudder as I mention the election, with the same tone of horrified reverence that those in fairyland use for an evil queen or a vengeful witch. But I know the context, and guess what? Even if that villain does some serious damage, there will be a happy ending. The Prince will prevail. Mine already has. We also know that “…we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places,” Ephesians 6:12. We wrestle against heavenly forces of darkness that have already been beaten, and that will lose in the end. Even when a ton of junk happens, in our lives or in the world, we can simply anticipate redemption more fully.
Wonderland Fun
As I have been living in the wonderland, something wonderful is happening to me. I used to think that life was bland when it had struggles, and that without a significant other, a romantic like me could never be happy. But I am learning otherwise living in wonderland, in contentment, and most of all in the presence of Christ. When we have contentment, rooted in hope and in Christ, and when we see that magic and romance are the very fabric of this reality, we can have a foundation of joy that allows us to enjoy everything else more fully.
I find that I can enjoy little things like music more than I ever thought I could, not just because I discovered that old music is vastly better, but because Christ is sovereign and is sweetly dwelling with me as I listen to it. And I need not feel guilty being happy when the world is sad because it will be redeemed, and like Gus gus the mouse I will do my part to help. Day after day, I am being lost and found in the beauty and stories of dreamers like me, in music and books and art, and wherever else I find the hope in my heart reflected by someone else.
I am succumbing to the glorious culture of wonderland, and the invitation is open to all. When the sky is dark and life seems dreary, I invite you to come breathe the clean, crisp air of wonderland, and take a little pixie dust back with you to the daily grind. Most of all, let us remember to keep our eyes on our Prince, for even the wonderland would be a wasteland without Him, and it is anything but.
