Do you ever feel that there should be something more to life? Does the world around you sometimes appear dull and uninteresting, a sort of black and white picture instead of vivid colour? Or perhaps you remember some of the wonder of discovery you experienced as a child and wish you could recapture it?
Let me tell you the story of Bob and Stan.
A few years ago I had the opportunity of visiting Stan, a friend of mine, who is working as a missionary in North Africa. I was given a lift by Bob, an agricultural research worker who had some business that day in town anyway. Bob drove me twenty miles through the semi-deserts of the Northern Sahara to the fifty-hut establishment where Stan had planted parish headquarters.
"Look at this God-forsaken country", Bob growled as his car ploughed a way through sand and dust. "Heat, insects, dysentry. No water. Everything is dirty. Absolutely no life to speak of. I've been here hardly three months and I'm utterly fed up and bored."
"What about the local people?", I asked.
"As stupid and dull as you could get them", he said. "I know we are told to be diplomatic and all that. But I find them awfully primitive. I"m looking forward to the day I"ll be back in England."
He dropped me off at Stan's house -which was no more than a glorified shack. Stan gave me a terrific welcome. He looked good, with his suntanned face as impetuous and his gestures as boisterous as they had been in college. "Welcome to the most fabulous place on earth!", he said. "Not yet discovered by tourists, thanks be to God, or they'd be crawling all over the place with cameras and rucksacks!"
Stan gave me an unforgettable tour of the world he lived in.
We visited the homes of the African farmers. He introduced me to them. He explained their many customs. Why their huts are built in a particular way, with doors facing one way and the main gate another. He made people dance for me and joined in their dance to their shrieking delight. He told me how young people are gradually prepared for life. He narrated their tales of wisdom and proverbs."In some ways these people are far ahead of us", he said. "There is a lot we can learn from them."
I spent a wonderful afternoon with Stan visiting the bush, the "desert jungle" as he called it. It was truly amazing to see the plants and animals specially evolved to survive in such a harsh climate. Stan had made the study of ants a hobby. He showed me the organization of a typical nest of black ants: the queen's quarters heavily guarded by soldier ants; the burrow with eggs tended by nurses; the "stables" where plant-lice are kept to be the ants' "cows". He pointed out a colony of warrior ants. He took me to the ant-hills of termites, built like slender towers up to ten feet high. "A form of air-conditioning", he said.
But that evening, after a tin and sweet potato supper, came the greatest surprise. "I'll show you the most overpowering panorama ever seen by humankind", he said. Carrying folding chairs we walked ten minutes up a hill with the help of a torch light. There we sat down. The torch was switched off. The night was pitch black. In all the surrounding countryside not a single light was to be seen.
But the cloudless sky above us was dotted with innumerable stars. I simply sat back and stared, overcome by the expanse and the beauty of it all. As my eyes got more and more used to the darkness, thousands more stars could be seen. The Milky Way brilliantly sweeping right across the sky, some stars twinkling brightly and changing colour, from red to green to blue, other stars as delicate dots, appearing and disappearing, or clustering in sprays of light. "And then to think they are thousands or millions of light years away", Stan whispered to me. "Lord, my God, how wonderful is your name throughout the world!"
Reflecting on that experience of two people living in the same part of the world, I was struck by the contrast between the outlooks of Bob and Stan.
BOB - found his world God-forsaken, tiresome and boring. He is a typical product of the deforming influences of our Western, technological society. Probably he never learnt to discover things for himself. His mind was filled with the jargon of work, school, shopping and TV. His search for life was lost in the escape of super-din music and watching football. What should have been no more than a means to live, had become an end in itself. He had become the victim of secular brainwashing.
STAN- had the ability to see what Bob could not see. He discovered excitement and mystery everywhere. It reminded me of Jesus' parable:
"Your eyes are like a lamp for the body.
When your eyes are sound, your whole body is full of light.
But when your eyes are no good, your whole body will be in darkness.
Make certain, then, that the light in you is not darkness!" (Luke 11: 34)
Stan perceived the world in the way poets and mystics do, with enlightenment, because they master a higher and truer vision. Stan could see mystery where others only see black and white.
Which of these is the nearest to the way YOU see life?
Text from: How Exciting is Wonder by John Wijngaards, Catholic Enquiry Centre, London 1984.
