A collection of short stories by HG Wells published in 1911 includes The Door in the Wall, considered by critics to be his finest short story. It deals with a subject the author returned to quite often in his writings – the tension between science and aesthetics.
Wells, a scientist by training, was fascinated by the contrast between the two and recognised the importance of both. The Door in the Wall is about a man called Lionel Wallace who grew up in an unhappy home. In adult life he recalled an event, real or imaginary, which took place when he was about five years old.
He wandered from home and found himself at a long white wall with a green door in it. He was curious to know what lay beyond the door, which seemed to draw him in, so he ran through the door before he could change his mind and inside discovered a wonderful garden where he was able to play, see amazing things and enjoy the company of the friendly people he met there, a contrast to his everyday life.
In later years Wallace became a successful politician but always regretted that he could never recapture the happiness of that childhood memory. Although he was considered by friends to have been very successful his professional accomplishments were of little value to him and he sees his life as a time of regret and dies unhappy and unfulfilled.
This fictional character represents those who struggle with fundamental questions about the meaning and purpose of life.
Are we just part of a mechanistic system and nothing more? And if there is more how can we access it?
Is Lionel Wallace really Wells himself contemplating these deep fundamental questions finding it difficult to bridge the gap between his sense of wonder and his rational scientific side?
It is a mistake to demand a rational explanation for everything, thus dismissing as meaningless things that are currently beyond our understanding or our experience. As Wells indicates in that short story, there is an instinct in all of us to explore what lies behind the doors of our unknowing and we should never give up on that. There are realities beyond explanation or understanding. For example, when one looks at the Mona Lisa painting what is one looking at? Is it simply paint, chemicals even, on canvas or is it something more and if so what is the “more”?
Tomorrow is Trinity Sunday, a good day to face the doors of unknowing that we all encounter in life.
It is a mistake in our spiritual lives to think that we have arrived, that we know it all. That is not what religious faith is about.
Behind and beyond all our religious dogmas, texts and creeds there remains a vast element of unknowing and there always will be. Jesus is recorded as saying in tomorrow’s gospel reading: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.”
That points us to religion as an adventure, a journey of discovery, informing all aspects of our lives and the world around us.
At a time when it seems many have lost a sense of wonder about the meaning and purpose of life, it is worth recalling these words of Albert Einstein: “The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand wrapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness.”