Last week I talked about Oh and Ah Thresholds. This week, I’ve expanded my scope to Oh and Ah Universes.

More to the point, we’re comparing our Earth to the Narnian World. Both of which were spawned by the same God, both of which are good, and both of which were made to inspire wonder in the eyes of their beholders.

ONE THAT’S IN THE OH UNIVERSE

Our world is a speck in the Oh Universe, a starry expanse filled with an unimaginably vast panoply of splendors, distances measured in light-years. Our world is its jewel; a spherical world suspended in space, orbiting a sun 400 times as grand as its moon, and 400 times further away so that the twin eyes of heaven look the same exact size and shape. This is the domain of man, a place designed to appeal to the human notion that bigger is better, and that the evidence for God in nature is based on power and size.

In this world, man has always sought to overcome physical challenges through intellect. What the first man who sailed across a meadow on a horse’s back thought, we will never know. But the world is too large for biology; it demands technology. It wasn’t long until steam trains ate the miles at a rate faster than the swiftest hawk. Boats carried the human race across vast distances, first limited by the power of strong arms, then aspiring to the swiftness of the wind, and finally to the might of steam and diesel. But even that was not enough. Men watched the birds soar through the unclaimed skies and they determined to match them, then surpass them, going from ponderous hot air balloons to propellers, jets, and ultimately mighty rockets that would propel them to other worlds.

ONE THAT IS THE AH UNIVERSE

Then there is the world that is the Ah Universe of Narnia, a good stretch of the legs if you can’t afford a horse, but altogether more intimate, inspiring wonder in the eyes of talking beasts. In this relatively small world, which wears the sky like a garment and the stars like a mantle, there is every bit as much wonder, every bit as much joy. For the secret talking beasts discovered, or humans lost, is the extraordinary lurking in the ordinary. Rather than dreaming of people from other worlds, they explore the folk whose planet happens to be the same. The industrious beaver makes friends with the faithful badger, the playful otter, the confident centaur, and the gentle lamb.

This is the universe where the primary evidence for God in nature is based on beauty and faithfulness. This is a world where diversity breeds strength, not prejudice. It is a place where the soil yields fruit in its season and the air invigorates and inspires fuller life.

The talking beasts neither need nor want to push spaceships out of their home into a blackness and coldness that seeks to impose death by a hundred fatal details. They have no urgent business that requires the convenience and speed of jet travel. Their sense of joy and wonder are best summed up in the opener of William Blake’s poem “Auguries of Innocence”.

To see a world in a grain of sand / And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand / And eternity in an hour.

Lest you confuse the emphasis on quality over quantity for inferiority, recall how the destiny of all souls, whether from the shadowlands of an Oh or Ah Universe, is to meet before the judgment seat and pass thereby into Chapter One of the great story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. Which universe better prepares us for this leap? Do you really get out of bed in the morning, struck by the awe that everything you see is but a speck of dust in the great scheme of things? If you do, my apologies. What the Ah Universe lacks in vast space, it makes up for in great warmth.

I shan’t bore you with a recap of our Oh Universe. If you need a refresher, step away from the screen and look out the window.

The Ah Universe and its crowning world…a flat world that makes up the vast majority of its size, shape, and bulk…is more cozy. Your world is not a speck of dust. The sun and moon are equidistant and equivalent in every way but brightness. Stars look down with kindly intelligence, for in Narnia space is not cold and barren. Its gentle rhythms dance to the music of the spheres rather than obey abstract, unfeeling natural laws.

When we, through some act of miraculous generosity, manage to transition from our Oh Universe into the Ah Universe, we begin to adopt its gentle tenor, its quiet and patient rhythms. We answer to our inner child and revel in the tiny treasures that make up 90 percent of our wealth. Gone is the need for speed. The road answers to our feet, and the air is for breathing, not travelling.

Perhaps, like Icarus, we have flown too close to the sun. We walk through crisp autumn days with our eyes glued to a tiny screen. We ask for things quickly and cheaply and are disappointed when they are shoddy and fragile. Is this in fact the secret that talking beasts discovered which we lost? Is our restlessness a sign that we grow tired of the Oh and long for the Ah? And short of a wardrobe or a painting, how do we restore that childlike sense of wonder? Well, friends, I won’t leave you hanging. The moment you realize that the little things really are the big things…when you slow down and savor what God has given you like a fine firkin of wine…you open a little pocket of the Ah Universe of your very own.