I sit here, looking at a staple. It's currently attached to another staple, which is part of a chain of other staples. The staple is next in line for my stapler. It could be the small piece of metal that keeps my next essay from falling apart, or it could be wasted as a test staple. It might be defective and thrown away, or it might not fail until I am about to turn the paper in. At the last second, it could release and my essay would become 10 sheets of scattered paper. I might never use it. It could sit in this house until we move out, because the stapler was misplaced. Maybe the next tenants will discover it and use that staple for their new homeowner's legal documents.
Eventually, though, it will probably find its way into the trash. It is inevitable. It could be used on my senior thesis, which the teacher will grade and return to me. I will likely keep that paper around for a few months, or maybe even a few years. One day I will find it in an old drawer or binder and realize that I have a copy backed up on my hard drive, and I will throw that copy away. Or, I might put it in a book of memories and keep it until I die. My children may cherish this book for ages. But they might forget it in the attic of a temporary house. The point is, whatever I attach my staple to will eventually lose significance. And it will be discarded.
I might rip my pants tomorrow, and not have a needle and thread handy! The staple could become part of one of my garments. I might pass that garment down to my cousin, who might wear it thin and throw it away. The staple could rust, it could lose its grip and fall out, it could fall in the grass and bury itself, or it could disappear in the corner of a schoolroom. Its job is important, but its significance will die quickly.
Interestingly enough, though, it will endure for a long, long time. A staple does not dissolve or melt or break up too easily, even after it is discarded. It is an object with a long life, but it will only be needed for a small fraction of that life.
Wonder is applied imagination.
When I was 6, my description would probably have been a wildly unpredictable one. I was not bound by experience and reality. My imagination had not yet been restrained by interaction with the world. I would have forecast exciting things for the staple that, in reality, would probably never happen. It would have been a pure outburst of imagination, not wonder.
St. Gregory of Nyssa's quote, in my opinion, emphasizes the importance of the search for truth over the actual understanding of it. A concept is something that the human brain can fully understand, because concepts are created by the human brain. To have a concept, we must be able to perceive. An idol is something concrete that one worships, whether it is an idea, person, or thing. It is often referred to negatively, because it implies material worship rather than heavenly worship. The first portion of the sentence is saying that when we truly believe we understand something, we have fallen into complacency. When we reduce God to a concept and think we fully understand Him, we have begun to worship something false; we are on the wrong path.
Wonder, however, is the constant search and thirst for the truth. Wonder is the path to an answer, but is not actually an answer in and of itself. St. Gregory of Nyssa is telling us that the only way to truly grasp anything is to be in a constant awareness of our inability to entirely understand it. That awareness, he posits, combined with the hunger and desire for truth, allows us to fully experience reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment