THE WONDERING MUSE

Welcome! My name is Morgan Murdock, the voice behind The Wondering Muse. My love for writing has followed me since I was a small child and has taken many forms: journals, letters, academic papers, free verse poetry, creative essays, and exactly one mystery novella about a peregrine falcon (which remains unpublished, to my high school self’s chagrin).

This blog is still in its infancy stage, but my hope is that, however you found your way here, you will leave with something worth your while.

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The “wondering muse” moniker came from a question that has stumped me as an adult: where has all the wonder gone?

Part of me would prefer to leave any answers to this question as entangled as seaweed in the tide line. The problem with that tack, as any seasoned beachcomber would tell you, is that treasures are almost always unearthed by digging in instead of stepping over.

So the question remains: why does the natural, delighted curiosity that so freely accompanies many of us in early childhood evade us by the time we reach adulthood?

In our current culture, we take little time to ponder or muse, or even to quietly observe. We have become a fast-paced, well-oiled wonder-less machine of getting there faster. Thinking things faster. Knowing things faster, so that we can cling to all that we know, instead of acknowledging that our finite perspective is limited.

But we were not created for an all-knowing cynical trudge towards the End.

We were created for Glory.

Yet how easy it is to ignore the small glories! — the masterful carvings of a maple leaf’s veins, the spiraling mobile-home shell of a hermit crab, the perfect surface tension of a dew droplet perched atop a single blade of grass. When’s the last time you picked up a leaf? Toddlers do it all the time (and while that itself is clearly not the only reason to adopt a new habit, in this case, why shouldn’t we?)! Do we think we are above rejoicing in common miracles? How will our hearts be made ready to enter the kingdom of heaven unless we listen to Jesus’ words and “become like little children?” Self-forgetful, unrushed, and easily delighted?

At its core, staring into the mysteries of who God is through the lens of creation is both awe-inducing and humbling. Maybe this is why we try to avoid it. Creation reveals that we are not in control in the ways we’d like to think we are. He is in complete control, and facing this truth will either comfort or terrify us. Maybe a little of both.

Some might argue that we cannot waste our lives drifting along like starstruck characters from fairytales, and I would heartily agree. True wonder at God’s creation and childlike joy in His designs should not result in a careless or directionless life, but rather, in a deepened understanding of His mercy, a more mature trust in His sovereign attention to every detail, and an intensified longing to know Him.

It is exactly because we are responsible to live out our days with purpose that we should take moments to pause and muse with awe and wonder — not as aimless wanderers, but as faith-filled sojourners — at the way all creation sings of His glory.