The Quest for a Re-Enchanted Vision

Wonder in retracing the footsteps of saints.

At Disciples of the Divine Logos, we believe that a quest for re-enchantment is not only possible but vital in the current moment: in an age marked by cultural fragmentation, spiritual malaise, a mental health or meaning crisis, nihilism, and the deterioration of much we have taken for granted in society. The term re-enchantment seems to be everywhere these days, at least if you’re in corners where such conversations are happening. To me it is longing for a connection with the ineffable, a desire to recover a vision of life that transcends the mundane, ultimately it is a search for God beyond the proposition. Re-enchantment is surely a desire for that flood of wonder to return into one’s experience of reality. For incarnation to feel more immediate. I have been searching for this awe and wonder, much as the saints and mystics of the past once experienced, now for a number of years. And such moments have fleetingly found me. Perhaps they always have been fleeting, lest the numinous itself becomes mundane. Rod Dreher and others have explored re-enchantment as something beyond the purely positive, with "strangeness" returning to the human experience as the Enlightenment recedes. He argues essentially that, as a neat and tidy modernity recedes, we are poised to rediscover yes, 'Living in Wonder', but also things long since buried, and indeed far less comfortable. Whilst that’s an important discussion, this post focuses on the positive aspect of re-enchantment one may be actively seeking.

Some may say that in the modern world, where the rush of technology and the glare of materialism so often drown out the spiritual, that this aim for a re-enchanted life itself is not realistic. That one has to flee to seclusion and intentional community with likeminded folks in order to truly find it. Can we, living in an age dominated by iPhones and screens, really recapture the wonder that permeated the lives of our spiritual ancestors? Is the trade-off we make for a lack of wonder simply our modern science, safety, sanitation and long lives?

Can the best we hope simply see us as tourists into re-enchantment? Whether on a pilgrimage for a weekend to some holy place, or participating in a magnificent mass or divine liturgy? I cannot answer these questions of course, but I offer this post as a space to retrace my own steps for those of you on your own journeys into re-enchantment. For me, this begins with Christ and His presence in the sanctified, holy human person. If you’re still reading, I take it as a given that one’s walk with the Logos, Jesus Christ, however it may look, is the foundation of this quest.

Saints as Living Icons

The saints in traditional Christianity are not merely distant historical figures. They are embodiments of a reality that transcends time and (in many ways) place. Their lives bear witness to God’s transforming grace, and their stories become living icons, marking out the path for us to follow. Through the saints, we glimpse the possibility of participating in the life of God; a vision of the divine that cuts through the thick veil of the material world. In this sense, they are much more than ancient figures; they are present realities, active in the ongoing life of the Church, and the people. Indeed, the Christian says in the creed that “we believe in the Communion of Saints”. Wherever they are now, whatever heaven may be, such figures therefore care for us all here on earth.

St Cuthbert praying with sea otters. Image credit: Aidan Hart

Of course, the sceptic, even perhaps many evangelical Christians, may wish to posit that much in these lives of ancient saints is simply mythmaking, arguing that they were just as flawed as the rest of us. Without dismissing critical thinking altogether, it is worth considering the role of memory and narrative in shaping human experience.

Memory is not a cold archive but a living reality, preserving what is essential rather than exhaustive detail. Let us take a positive example. I remember my grandmother not as a collection of facts but as a presence, shaped by what was most meaningful. In this way, memory orients us toward telos, toward purpose. This is perhaps a pre-Enlightenment way of seeing, one that values memory not merely as historical record but as participation in a greater story. Story is central. This is indeed how our perception is intuitively structured. We effectively unlearn this. Perhaps the ‘smarter’ one is, the more likely one is to have lost this.

Modernity places such emphasis on the particular that it leads to an explosion of complexity, which risks reducing us to a spiral of apathy and dissatisfaction. It reduces one’s ability to orientate oneself properly in the world. Stories of miracles, spiritual battles, and divine intervention often arise not merely as attempts to embellish reality (such would be a common enlightenment critique), but as an attempt to express and preserve something of the transcendent nature of the saint’s life. They are, in a sense, echoes of a deeper reality, a reality that, though it may seem distant or elusive at first, clearly holds a tremendous power. Otherwise why are such figures remembered, even in the folk traditions of say, northeast England or Ireland?

More boldly than that I would posit such miracles did indeed occur, however outside of our current understanding they may be. For example, Cuthbert’s healing of a fellow monk’s knee through prayer, healing a sick woman through blessed bread, or accounts of animals delivering him food. It may be that we have ourselves constructed a reality where it is deemed almost impossible for the miraculous to break through, placing our faith as it were solely in man as opposed to God.

Saint Cuthbert would pray the psalms through the night in the North Sea. Bede records sea otters around him. (Image generated in Midjourney)

In remembering and recounting these lives from long ago, we do not merely look back to an idealised past; we draw on the actual foundation of our communities and places. We are reminded why so many of our place names are connected to these holy figures. Saints like Cuthbert hold a unique place as builders, as founders of community. They become the first in cultural memory, even a neglected memory. And their church still sits in the centre of town. They are the ones who bring the light of Christ into the dark places of the world. They embody the heroic pattern of the one who enters the wilderness, the chaos, and brings light. The hero who brings a redemption and goodness greater than themselves. There is far more going on here than meets the eye. The saint serves as a beacon, and the things or places connected to him or her become like portals into a deeper world. They show us what to pay attention to, and a new reality shines forth from that newfound attention.

One may dismiss this, but the pattern remains. Even in a secular age, the west still upholds a vision of the heroic figure who pushes into the frontier, who brings a kind of liberating goodness, perhaps even who brings justice or progress. Yet stripped of the spiritual life and the Way of Christ, this vision is beginning to sound hollow.

The Sacred Landscape: Lindisfarne and Inner Farne

Saint Cuthbert's Island, Lindisfarne

And so we have turned to the image of the saint. It is worth taking the time to study the figure who speaks to you, read accounts of their life and do a bit of digging. Then it remains to step outside! Wonderfully the land itself where Cuthbert dwelt, Lindisfarne and the remote Farne islands, remain little changed in thirteen hundred years, unmarred by the rampant industrialisation that mirrors our internal change but in the outside world. If our minds are busy and dizzy, so too are the cities in which we live. Pilgrims to these holy sites can feel the power of place. One commonly hears this said of Lindisfarne (when the tourists are absent) or of Walsingham. The sea, the rocks, the winds all seem to whisper of a time before the world was overwhelmed by noise. Here we stand on ground that, in some ways, remains as it was in Cuthbert’s day. The experience of place is perhaps the first step to experiencing ‘re-enchantment’.

Seeing with New Eyes

I have found that to seek re-enchantment is not merely to escape modernity, but to see reality anew. The pilgrimages and the saints inspire a change in us, but this is not the whole journey. Jonathan Pageau speaks of the need to recover the symbolic world, to perceive meaning not as something imposed but as something discovered, already present in creation. This is not about layering a myth onto reality but about stripping away that fog that keeps us from seeing what has always been there. The wonderous is not lost; it is veiled, waiting to be revealed. And so, perhaps we must learn again to see, to recognise the hand of God not only in the scenery of a pilgrimage but in the quiet, ordinary moments of life.

I mentioned earlier that such fleeting moments of wonder do come to me, perhaps more often than I immediately recall. One such moment occurred the afternoon before our second child, William, was born. It was a golden sunny June day. Our garden backs onto a stream and trees where many birds live. Everyone was enjoying the warmth and the back door was open. A young blackbird, barely more than a chick, flew into the house. This hasn’t happened in our five years of living here. It flew immediately upstairs, and perched beneath our bed. I managed to soon catch it and set it free.

The symbolism wasn’t lost on me. I have finally learned to pay attention (and this is a key to re-enchantment). Birds are often seen as messengers from heaven. The creature which flies between the heavens above and the land below. And here was a young one, fragile and full of life, arriving just before the birth of our son. The bed, of course, is the place where new life arrives into the world. It is comfort and safety; the nest. The bird’s presence seemed to embody something profound, far more than a coincidence if one has the eyes to see. Both my wife and I knew then that William would be coming within a few hours, himself being a gift indeed from above. It was a small moment, yet deeply meaningful, a sign of the Divine's presence in a world that can often feel empty and disconnected. Seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened.