Menu Close

My Enchanted Life

In the course of writing several posts on the subjects of disenchantment and enchantment, I have necessarily given some thought to my own life. I have concluded that I live an enchanted life. Consider the following:

  • When I get up each morning a steaming cup of coffee appears at my side.
  • Mysteriously, our bed is made up every morning, with the sheets perfectly tucked and pillows flawlessly arranged.
  • I never run out of toothpaste.
  • I never run out of toilet paper.
  • Dirty clothes magically disappear, only to reappear neatly folded (underware) or hung in their proper place.
  • Dust and debris disappear without explanation.
  • Each day I find the window blinds raised.
  • The refrigerator and cupboard never seem to be wanting.
  • The cats are fed without fail.
  • My prescriptions get refilled without prompting.
  • Our vehicles are never left unlocked.
  • Misplaced articles magically appear in their proper place.
  • Unnecessary lights inexplicably turn off.
  • Family/friends birthday cards appear for my signature.
  • Somehow, meals appear most days at 5:00pm.
  • I never run out of cheerios.
  • Fingerprints on the storm door always temporary.
  • Our bed always has the proper amount of cover.
  • My distilled water never runs out.
  • Best of all, bruises, cuts, wounded feelings and unspoken needs are always treated with just the right medicine.

Indeed my life is enchanted. And to that I say:
WHO THE HELL NEEDS MARY POPPINS?
Not me. I’ve got the fantastic ANN WATSON EZELL.
Happy 77th Birthday !

She is magical

Defaulting to Disenchantment

Living in a disenchanted age is the most significant challenge we face in seeking a relationship with God

I have continued to ponder the challenge of understanding life in a disenchanted age and communicating those understandings in a way that will help clarify my conclusion.

The domination of disenchantment in our age is prerequisite to my conclusion.

Charles Taylor asserts the disenchanted age evolved in a slow but methodical process over the previous 500 years. This explains, at least in part, why there is not a general awareness or concern about our contemporary age being disenchanted. Like the fabled frog, we unaware we have been slowly boiled (disenchanted).

A second factor which I believe impedes awareness of a disenchanted age is the obvious existence of, and attraction to, enchantment in our age. Coincidentally, it also argues for the domination of disenchantment.
When we feel the pinch of disenchantment we can conveniently escape to a enchanted refuge (vacation, fantasy, sabbatical, meditation, yoga, religion, contemplation, prayer, daydreams, sci-fi , mystery (ad infinitum ). Such escapes are only temporary. If not temporary, people become, at best, weird anomalies or at worse, outcasts.

I think that it can be helpful to image enchantment/disenchantment as default modes. Humans like computers have an operating system. Before the disenchanted age, humanity’s operating system was enchanted. As characterized earlier, in the enchanted age the world had a vertical, spiritual dimension. Human events intermingled with spirits, God, and magic. It was the default mode for human interaction and source of meaning and purpose. Progressively, humanity searched outside their enchanted realm for answers to the mysteries of their existence. The example of Galileo, tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, and forced to recant, spending the rest of his life under house arrest, illustrates the dominance of enchantment and the impulse to default.

The default mode for the disenchanted age is reliance on human ability/reason and scientific laws as an ultimate source for answers to the problems of modernity. Utility, efficiency and production are our preimemmant tools to achieve full potential as human beings. Inherently, disenchantment rejects the transcendent. Mystery, fantasy, spirituality, faith, divinity, magic, art, namely, enchantment, is rendered irrelevant. our existence in a disenchanted age is reduced to one dimension, removing depth and meaning and distorting the purpose of our lives. Aas Beck describes, “When creation is stripped of its holy, sacred and enchanted character …it becomes–material. Raw, disenchanted material. Inert stuff. Piles of particles.”

In this disenchanted age we live in a paradox. On the one hand there is the reality of human progress and the optimism of an unbounded future, all attributable to human ingenuity and science. On the other hand, there is a transcendent reality. An awareness that we exist and recognize our need for meaning and purpose which is unfulfilled in a disenchanted reality.

The challenge is how do we live in this paradox. A default to disenchantment demands “either/or” and rejects “both/and”. Defaulting to “either/or” is the defining issue that leads me to my conclusion that living in a disenchanted age is the most significant challenge we face in seeking a relationship with God.
More to come.

Thoughts on Disenchantment

Not too surprisingly, my post “Life in a Disenchanted Age” did not appear to generate much interest. Perhaps there was some passing interest, but because of the subject matter, it was not something to elicit serious interest. After all, disenchantment is probably not high on our list of things to be concerned about. But I am not deterred in my assertion:

Living in a disenchanted age is the most significant challenge  we face in seeking a relationship with God.

If you are seeking a relationship with God or struggling with your relationship with Him, understanding disenchantment , according to my premise, is important. What I hope to accomplish through this and subsequent posts is some understanding as to why I would make such an assertion. That process will inherently provide opportunity reassess my conclusions.

Let me start with some clarifications. Living in a disenchanted age does not mean there is nothing enchanted about our world and life experiences. Few would deny the existence of a spiritual realm / reality. Disenchantment is the default for the western worldview. As a result of the belief that only human agency or scientific law can function for us as causal forces, enchantment becomes irrelevant… fairy tales, or at its best, entertainment. As entertainment, enchantment is no small matter. Disney, super-heroes, sci-fi, zombies, et al , testify to an inherent human connection with an enchanted world. Likewise, for religion, faith, spirituality, mystery. However, in a disenchanted age enchantment is only a momentary diversion from reality. All that stuff is nice, but we all know that when it comes time to “cut bait or fish”… “if it is to be it is up to me”.
If my day to day reality is disenchanted, the implications to my life are profound. I do not want to live a life that is less than the full human experience.
There is much to think about.

Some years ago, in the midst of a serious spiritual struggle, God spoke to me through a song. In the light of this discussion, It was about my disenchanted life and it inadequacy to answer the question, “Who am I?”.

THe Logical Song – Supertramp

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily
Oh joyfully, playfully watching me
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh responsible, practical
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical There are times when all the world’s asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am I said, watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical
Liberal, oh fanatical, criminal
Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re Acceptable
Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable!
Oh, take it take it yeah But at night, when all the world’s asleep
The questions run so deep
For such a simple man
Won’t you please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am, who I am, who I am, who I am
‘Cause I was feeling so logical
D-d-digital
One, two, three, five
Oh, oh, oh, oh
It’s getting unbelievable

Prayer as Conversation

This is a repost from 2007.

Recently a class discussion centered on the idea of prayer being conversation with God. It was suggested that an understanding of prayer as conversation with God can not only have a profound impact on our prayer life, it can be a window through which we can assess our relationship with God. Just as the character of our conversation in human relationships betrays the health of the relationship, so it is with God. For example if conversations with friend or family never progress beyond the trivial and/or self centered yada… yada… yada; at best, the relationship will not grow and most likely will diminish over time. On the other hand, when conversations reflect mutual interest and concern, share inner feelings, fears and desires, it is a sign of a healthy relationship. As I think about this, I am grieved by the shallowness of some of my conversations with friends and family and what that indicates about the quality of our relationship. It is also true of my relationship with God as I think of the prayers I offer and their meagerness and superficialness. It is important to resist the temptation to think that the solution to having healthy relationships is simply start having meaningful conversations. That is not the case. What I am suggesting is that an assessment of the character of our conversations will help us to understand the health of our relationships, it is an occasion for truthfulness. It will force us to the question, “How can my relationship become healthier”? That is the real question. When we answer that question, meaningful conversations will prevail.

Life in a Disenchanted World

n my last post, “Who Needs Mary Poppins?”I introduced the subject of disenchantment and its relationship to recent personal circumstances. That experience, coupled with the current challenge at our church to have a Deep and Wide relationship with God, has generated considerable thoughts and questions.

Let me begin with my conclusion:

Living in a disenchanted age is the most significant challenge  we face in seeking a relationship with God.

As I write that conclusion, I am struggling with describing a disenchanted age as “most significant”  rather than “a significant”. At this point, I am sticking with “most significant”, understanding that my continued study may change my opinion.

Disenchanted World

Relying primarily on Richard Beck’s posts regarding disenchantment and his references to Charles Taylor’s book “The Secular Age”, my understand regarding a disenchanted world is as follows:

In the enchanted age (>500 years ago) the world had a vertical, spiritual dimension. Human events intermingled with spirits, God, and magic. Over the last 500 years this vertical/spiritual dimension has collapsed, as a result, the world has become disenchanted.

In today’s disenchanted world, only human agency or scientific law can function for us as causal forces. As Taylor notes we now live in an immanent age. Only the flat, horizontal dimension exists for us.

Taylor notes that there are two major symptoms marking the transition from enchantment to disenchantment. First, is the collapse of the vertical, spiritual dimension, leaving only the flat, horizontal dimension.

The second symptom of disenchantment is the rise of the buffered self. In the enchanted age the self was at the crossroads of a great deal of spiritual traffic. Spells, demons, or God could penetrate the boundaries of the self. During the enchanted age the self was porous. But in an immanent age the walls of the self become firmer and clearer. The self becomes isolated and closed in upon itself. That is the buffered self.In the face of this “flatness” we struggle to find depth without recourse to the transcendent.

Beck point out two of the rebellions against the immanent order noted by Taylor. First, there is what Taylor calls “the Romantic protest,” the attempt of romantics of all eras to find a dimension of depth in communion with Nature and Eros. 

A different kind of rebellion against the immanent is to find depth by turning inward and going “deeper” into the self. We live in an age of interiority, where the dimension of depth is found by tunneling into the core of the human psyche. We find meaning in being true to ourselves, living by an ethic of autonomy and authenticity. During the enchanted age guidance was sought externally; depth of meaning was gained via transcendence. By contrast, in an immanent age I gain depth by going “inside” and consulting the inner light of “my true self.” Either way, internally or externally, a dimension of depth is created. The virtues of each approach can be, and are, debated. It is the need and desire for depth that is noteworthy.

With disenchantment we have lost a sense of depth. As Taylor notes, “There is a generalized sense in our culture that with the eclipse of the transcendent, something may have been lost.”

What, exactly, has been lost? Generally, in a disenchanted age we have more difficulty with issues of meaning: “Almost every action of ours has a point; we’re trying to get to work, or to find a place to buy a bottle of milk after hours. But we can stop and ask why we’re doing these things, and that points us beyond to the significance of these significances. The issue may arise for us in a crisis, where we feel that what has been orienting our life up to now lacks real value, weight…A crucial feature of the malaise of immanence is the sense that all these answers are fragile, or uncertain; that a moment may come, where we no longer feel that our chosen path is compelling, or cannot justify it to ourselves or others. There is a fragility of meaning…”

Because of this void of meaning, “…day to day life… is emptied of deeper resonance, is dry, flat; the things which surround us are dead, ugly, empty; and the way we organize them, shape them, in order to live has not meaning, beauty, depth, sense.”  We now experience “a terrible flatness in the everyday.”

In the face of this “flatness” we struggle to find depth without recourse to the transcendent.

It is obvious that this post has not addressed directly my conclusion that living in a disenchanted age is the most significant challenge we face in seeking a relationship with God.

My intent has been to establish some definition of a disenchanted age. Subsequent posts will, hopefully, make the connection clearer.