Wonder

“Prodigal” - part of the photo series “Sacred Intangible” by Sean Waldron

Before I married my wife, I lived in a crumbling house with a few roommates in downtown Littleton, CO. I say crumbling only because there was a floor to ceiling crack in the basement concrete wall, foreshadowing what I can only hope is a future repair. It has nothing to do with this blog or story, just to set the mood and vibe.

Mood set? Now then,

I moved in late to this house after everyone had already picked their rooms. Normal rooms, with closets and such. What was left was barely called a room, I would call it more a space. There was no closet, there was no carpet padding, it was more like the corner of a lazily finished basement walled off with a door. If I put my feet flat against the wall on one side and bent forward, I could touch the other side of the space with my fingers. And I loved it.

It was my first space after finally moving from my dad’s house. The freedom I felt was everlasting. I had 3 dudes to hang with, get pissed off at when they didn’t clean dishes, watch trash tv late into the night laughing and farting in the basement, to finally slunk back to my corner room and shut the door without feeling that claustrophobic heaviness that comes with living with your parents. No, I paid for it. This room was mine.

I played music as a “career” for a few years, 2012-2016 or so. Career is in quotes because it was in this room that I realized it wasn’t one. No matter how much I wanted to follow the path of John Mayer, I found myself beating my bloody, calloused fists against a solid brick wall that refused to budge. Purely out of inspiration and/or stubbornness, I continued until I finally had the night where I let God know what I thought of his sovereignty.

“Fuck you man, I guess I’ll just to video because obviously music isn’t going anywhere. If you want it to happen you’ll have to do it.”

Retrospectively this was haste and foolishness roaring from a displeased selfishness, and I’m not proud of it, only brutally honest to drive my point. This isn’t the beginning of a redemption story about chasing my dreams and realizing them on the Pepsi Center’s stage in front of 13,000 screaming fans shouting my chorus back to me. Nah, this is more of a parallel to the Prodigal.

I have to think when he pocketed his inheritance and hiked away from the door step towards the vast wilderness in front of him full of possibility and debauchery, he felt that exact same spark of freedom I experienced in that 10’x10’ Harry Potter closet of a room. And when he drunkenly spent his last dime on the well whiskey at that grimy dive bar with the loose women, and found himself dirtied and soiled wrestling pigs the next day, I’d say the Prodigal had a similar experience of utter failure and despair that I felt when I finally knew I was chasing that same wind.

Is it bad to follow dreams and pursue passion? Absolutely, positively, unflinchingly no, which is what I’m aiming to explore through this project - UNLESS it’s peppered with this selfish and ultimately destructive motive to acquire prestige and popularity. There are so many opportunities to make our own bricks of gold, and build our Towers of Babel with this inheritance of talents and abilities, and that invited freedom we feel on our first step out towards the unknown can quickly become smeared by the fruitless desire of constructing this tower we think is going to make us important.

Instagram is a perfect allegory equating followers and likes with this emblem of worth, your value determined by digits and zeros after commas, after zeros. No, popularity isn’t inherently bad just like inheriting a fortune isn’t evil, however the desire can give birth to sin through your actions, just like my boy wasting his on drink and sex, just like me thinking I can force God’s hand in a career move.

The ointment to the inflammation of this selfish desire is something I’ve found to be a key ingredient to man’s purpose, and that would be “wonder.”

In the activity of wonder, one doesn’t have the definition or result in hand, only the mystery beckoning a wild pursuit. When the mystery and titillation is strong enough, the journey is adventurous and captivating to an extent that putting a dog-ear in the corner of the page only intensifies this craving to find out what happens next.

That, friends, is the essence of God in our pursuit of investing our talents. When we can allow the mystery to drive us instead of that unquenched thirst to make sure we’re better than the person beside us, we will have the flood of “deep calling to deep” washing us so quickly away to eternal mind-blowing awe we won’t have time to count our followers. And when we’re soaked to the bone with wonder for an all-powerful God, the towels of popular opinion would unravel in a sopping mess fit only for the waste bin.

What I’m trying to say is when our focus is on building ourselves into the most popular, the most profitable, the most desired agency in the widest circle attainable, we lose any room reserved for the improbable and impossible miracle of God’s unhinged agency to blow us away.

When I thought the best thing for me to do was continue punching my ground-beef knuckles agains the bricks of uninterested venues, lackluster Spotify plays, and unmoved fans, what I was essentially doing is trading that ultimate experience of God’s revealed sovereignty for an arrogant and ignorant view of my purpose. I told God - an everlasting being, all-powerful and omniscient, effervescent and miraculous - that I knew what needed to happen better than he did. Ah, the rushing water of freedom can quickly change current, can’t it?

I am not saying hard work is left aside for “Jesus take the wheel!,” no. I’m saying this -

Eccl 9:10: Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with (all) your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

We’re going to end up where everyone ends up, six feet underneath the ground physically, and thrust somewhere spiritually you or I couldn’t even begin to imagine. What happens here in the physical sense stays here. The pile of money Joker slides down in The Dark Knight stays a pile of unused cash when we’re floating like Casper towards the gates of heaven. We have no use for it in Sheol.

However, when we’re here on this physical earth, our hand finds this passion that burns like a combusting star in our chest, and that, friends, we chase and pursue with all our might.

It’s there for a reason, this wonder, these passions. When you relent to keeping it for yourself and give in to the work of experiencing it, there you find the ages of miracle and mystery claimed in the bible to be true and living, and thus your desire to spend fortunes building this ultimately useless tower erected for selfish gain erodes into a Grand Canyon of amazement. It’s what we all want, to touch that sacred intangible.

It’s in wondering we find it, bold and beautiful, and it’s through woe we feel it…