My Master’s Thesis was a symphonic band piece entitled, Pursuing the Wonder. In this piece, I wanted to musically portray the quest for childlike wonder that each of us need to truly appreciate and enjoy life. The concept for the piece was inspired by a visit to the location of a spring in Missouri. This spring came from deep in the earth of a Missouri cave. The simple idea of never ending water from an unknown source so fascinated me that it caused me to begin looking at all kinds of “ordinary” things differently. (A bit more on this here)
I remember walking on campus in the spring when the dogwoods were in bloom. The pink petals in the trees and peppering the ground seemed like such an undeserved visual gift highlighted by the music of wind, animal chatter, and imperceptible layers of organized noise. I began to consciously think about things that were going around me that I might never notice…the ants and insects going about their daily tasks in the flower bed along the sidewalk, the process of photosynthesis occurring in the leaves of the trees blowing above me, the thoughts of the two people that just passed me on the path. There was so much more to this world around me than I could ever know or even begin to acknowledge.
And so this wonder that was awakening in me began to change me and I pray continues to change me so that my awareness of what is truly wonderful informs the way I treat everyone and everything around me.
There’s much more that can be said about wonder and how it influenced the piece of music that I wrote. I don’t want you to think by my title that I experienced wonder because I was humble. But, I do know that when I am truly in awe of the miracles that surround me, I cannot help but realize that I am but a small part of this incredible creation.
All of this brings me to share some thoughts on creativity from the very articulate English writer, G. K. Chesterton. Thomas C. Peters, in the book The Christian Imagination, writes of Chesterton:
Again and again in his writings, Chesterton pointed to the child as the key to imagination. It is in the ‘imitation of the child,’ that adults can rediscover the imagination that has been extinguished within them.
The fact must not be overlooked that this call for poets and critics to imitate the child is essentially a call to humility. Indeed, Chesterton believed that humility is literally the foundation for greatness, and no less so in art than in any other department of life. In one of his youthful poems, G.K. had sincerely wondered how he had even managed ‘to earn the reward of looking at a dandelion’. Later in this Autobiography he recalled that child is humility as the very source of the sense of wonder that is necessary for imagination. He wrote:
But in substance what I said about the dandelion is exactly what I should say about the sunflower or the sun, or the glory which (as the poet said) is brighter than the sun. The only way to enjoy even a weed is to feel unworthy even of a weed.
Here is a remarkable statement, pregnant with all of Chesterton’s doctrine of imagination. Humility–a true sense of my unworthiness in relation to the Creator and the created universe–is the key to wonder, the door into true imagination.
