Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

Dreher (The Benedict Option), an editor at the American Conservative, offers an eclectic invitation for Christians to find the sacred in the everyday. Tracing the West’s “progressive disenchantment” with a more mystical faith “since the High Middle Ages,” he explains how the industrial revolution propelled a rise of capitalism that has left humans obsessed with their own power and knowledge, blinded to the signs of “divine reality” that permeated the lives of “our enchanted ancestors.” As a corrective, readers are advised to adopt an attitude of vulnerability and openness to the existence of God, “or at least... meaning, beyond your head.” According to Dreher, doing so opens up a world where music, art, and natural beauty are evidence of “God’s handiwork”; “signs, wonders, and miracles” abound; and “demonic” activity is a reality. Dreher’s message about making room for life’s unknowns is often stimulating, though he struggles to tie together a surfeit of topics—UFOs, artificial intelligence, exorcisms—and has a tendency to wander into distracting hyperbole (“If AI becomes sentient, or so convincingly mimics sentience that it’s a distinction without a difference, then we will treat AI entities like gods”). Flaws aside, this has much for the spiritually curious to chew on. (Oct.)