Frankly, I don’t read a lot of stuff by people who are still alive. N.D. Wilson is an exception. I’ve wanted to read this book for a while. It was on my Christmas list. My wife gave it to me as a gift. It was a good one.
I’ve read the 100 Cupboards Trilogy, and the things I said about it ring true with this book as well. With Wilson’s books, at least for me, it’s all about atmosphere. That’s the very thing I griped about with the Harry Potter books. It’s the thing I love in Wilson’s.
It’s not that you read this book and come a way with a bunch of quotes (though there are lots of good ones), or a bunch of precise arguments about the Christian faith (though there are some of those as well). It’s that you come away with Christian emotions – awe for God, wonder at his creation.
I finished reading the book yesterday and, my wife will testify to this, I was miserable. I was miserable because it was a cold, rainy day. I finished the book and immediately wanted to go outside and explore. I wanted to go for a walk. To look at some ants. To look at the stars. He almost made me want to see a tornado (but not quite). I was tempted to just go outside and stand in the rain with my eyes and mouth open so that I could absorb as much of it as possible. But I didn’t really want to catch the cold that would have immediately ensued. So I just stared at my kids all day. That wasn’t bad.
Mission accomplished. I know this is what the author wants.
My mission with these recent readings is always to record immediate impressions and noteworthy points I want to talk away. So much for the impression, now for some points. Here are some memory-worthy quotes:
- I live on a near perfect sphere hurtling through space at around 67,000 miles per hour. Mac 86 to pilots. Of course, this sphere of mine is also spinning while it hurtles, so tack on an extra 1,000 miles per hour at the fat parts. And it’s all tucked into this giant hurricane of stars. Yes, it can be freaky. Once a month or so, my wife will find me lying in the lawn, burrowing white knuckles into the grass, trying not to fly away. But most of the time I manage to keep my balance despite the speed, and I don’t have to hold on with anything more than my toes (p. 2).
- Before Emo, before the existentialists, there was Aeschylus, preaching. He didn’t fuss about meaninglessness, because he wasn’t a white, middle-class kid with a comfortable life, no butt, and tight pants (p. 95).
- I see craft in the world. I cannot watch dust swirl on the sidewalk without seeing God drag His finger, or listen to spring rain running in the streets without hearing him roll his Rs (p. 98).
- This universe is a portrait in motion, a compressed portrait in motion, a miniature, inevitably stylized, for it is trying to capture the Infinite. The galaxies are each one fraction of a syllable in a haiku of the Ultimate. On the human level, art is all recompression, attempts at taking a sunset from the small frame of the horizon and putting it on a postcard; taking a blues riff, the rhythmic vibration of strings, and capturing a sense of loss; marble, chiseled and shaped until it shows nobility; a cartoonist’s frame, simple ink, grabbing at six-year-old boyness, grabbing at laughter (p. 108).
- But a creative God, a God without whom none of this would be, a God who spoke reality into being and shapes it even now, He has authority. This world is His. You are His the way my words are mine (p. 133).
- Why do Christians think of purity, holiness, and even divinity as something with big eyes and soft fur? Why do we so often ignore the beautiful in exchange for the cute? (p. 145).
- When Christ rose, He rose in the flesh. He was no ghost, and yet He walked through walls. The walls were the ghosts, and so are we (p. 150).
- Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced (p. 154).
- Things have changed. A great sheet was lowered in Peter’s dream. Eat. Have sushi. Try a snake. Prawns are a treat wrapped in bacon with a spacy barbecue sauce.
Food is holy when you eat it, when it is used to strengthen a body used to strengthen the world (p. 155).
I watched a documentary program discussing the ‘big bang’ not too long ago. I marveled that scientists postulate that the entire shape and destiny of all matter took form from an invisible nothing (energy), less than the size of a pin-point, (how energy can have size is beyond me) in planck time – something like 10-57 (that’s 10 to the negative 57th) of a second. But, of course, no God was involved. I’d go outside right now and put my face in the grass and hold on for dear life if it wasn’t so cold and wet. Maybe I’ll try the carpet.
I recommend the book, and taking hold of the nearest grounded object.
