
Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age
by Rod Dreher
Zondervan Books, Grand Rapids, 2024
Rod Dreher, the conservative political analyst and cultural critic, now lives in Hungary – one center of the struggle against globalism. Dreher published last year Living in Wonder, the third in a series of commentaries on the social and religious life of our age. In The Benedict Option he championed the establishment of small communities as a refuge from the surrounding world. In Live not by Lies Dreher wrote in a darker vein. He no longer saw self-sufficient communities as successfully existing within today’s society but anticipated conflict and persecution exemplified by the life and experiences of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Now, in Living in Wonder, Dreher writes both of his own spiritual quest and even of the restoration of the sacred in this “secular age.”
I doubt that this work will attain the celebrity of The Benedict Option. Living in Wonder covers too broad a range of topics: history, spirituality, philosophy, religious practice and personal faith experiences. The book’s starting point is the classic topic of disenchantment: the loss in the modern world of any sense the divine as present in the universe. This of course has been an ongoing issue since the romantic movement. Much more recently, Catholic authors have taken up the theme. Cristina Campo, whose works we have reviewed here, wrote eloquently of the loss in the modern world of symbols and of man’s sense of destiny. Czesław Miłosz did the same in The Land of Ulro. How is Man to live in such a world or even rediscover a sense of this world’s “enchantment”? These are the questions Dreher addresses.
He writes of the importance of prayer, liturgy and of the beautiful as portals to the sacred. Here and there throughout this book Dreher speaks warmly of his(relatively) new faith, Eastern Orthodoxy. His advocacy, however, is never overbearing or exclusive and it’s refreshingly different from the tirades of others who have moved to the East. Dreher doesn’t rant about filioque, the Byzantine empire, 1204 and the allegedly unbridgeable gap between West and East. Indeed, it would be hard for him to do so, since, like his earlier works in this series, Living in Wonder aims at a broad readership in various religious traditions. Speaking of his Orthodox faith, Dreher appropriately emphasizes those aspects attractive to outsiders: the beautiful liturgy, the continuing centrality of the mystic tradition, the cult of icons. Dreher makes the case that Orthodoxy has thereby preserved a greater sense of the sacred as present in this world.
Dreher however, ranges far beyond this. He particularly dwells on tangible experiences of the sacred in this world: wonders and miracles, coincidences and healings are discussed at length. The author not only presents experiences of a benign “spiritual presence” but also the dangers of encountering evil forces actively working harm. In so doing, Dreher delves into realms such as exorcism, demonic forces potentially present in AI, and even UFOs.
I think that these matters weaken the argument of the book. I myself have met people who have had such experiences – so I do not at all dismiss this aspect of reality. But the counsel of all the spiritual writers I know is to eschew pursuing such things. Dreher, however, seems to think the opposite: someone wishing to rediscover the sacred should be expecting and seeking out these phenomena. Is this the residual influence of the world of evangelical Protestantism which the author claims to have abandoned? The bizarre nature of some of the events for which the author vouches will unfortunately lead many readers not to take his latest work seriously.
Rod Dreher brings his own experiences into the narrative of encounters with the world beyond the world. Some of these events involve personal tragedies in the author’s life. This lends a poignant and serious note to the author’s reflections. As in his other books, Dreher also relentlessly quotes witnesses to support the argument of his book. They are predominantly, but not exclusively, Western converts to Orthodoxy. The overall effect of these “voices,” however, is to create a feeling of disorganization: the reader feels that he is hopping from issue to issue, from topic to topic, from country to country. And all in a rather short book. Dreher’s language also detracts from his exalted spiritual aims. It all too often is excessively colloquial; on other pages Dreher offers undigested terms derived from Orthodoxy: nous, perichoresis, theosis etc.
Dreher has moved in this book beyond the facile optimism of The Benedict Option and the focus on cultural and political catastrophe of Live Not by Lies. He correctly sees that what is needed is the recovery of faith and of spirituality. Disenchantment is a defining feature of contemporary Western culture. A culture, however, cannot be changed by the exercise of the willpower of individuals or communities however well intentioned. And certainly not by the idiosyncratic spiritual quests of some of the characters quoted in this book. Only generations and even centuries of men living an ordered, sacramental faith can effect a reversal of the present malaise. This world does need to be reenchanted – but that is not something that we should consciously set out to achieve. If and when the perception of enchantment revives it will be the result of the practice of a rediscovered faith.
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