Trust and The Absolute Reality of the World

Phenomenology, brothers and sisters, is like learning to play the harmonica (or mandolin): it’s easy to get the hang of it, but mastery takes much time and practice.

A few years ago, I submitted an essay entitled “George Herbert and the Phenomenology of Grace” to an academic journal. Among other things, in the correspondence between the editor and myself, he had this to say: “Your essay…is beautifully written (to be honest, not something I expected from an essay that features the words “phenomenology” and “deconstruction” right from the beginning: usually these are sure signs to me that what follows will be, at least for me, tough sledding).” “Beautifully-written phenomenology” should not be an oxymoron. Unfortunately, phenomenology, especially that espoused (I’m not entirely sure it is practiced) in certain dark corners of academia does not hold clarity of expression as a virtue. It’s as if they only want to share the secret with a coterie of initiates or something.

But phenomenology, as far as I’m concerned, is the gateway drug to sophiology. And I don’t mean phenomenology as taught or articulated in obscurantist and purple prose, but phenomenology as something one does. It is not a philosophy. It is the furthest thing from a philosophy: it is an activity. An activity characterized by passivity, to be sure, but an activity nonetheless.

As Edmund Husserl famously wrote, phenomenology is an act of returning to the things themselves. That is, it is an act of presence before phenomena, a presence attentive to the presence(s) within phenomena. That is, in this contemplative engagement, the Things can (and do) reveal themselves to us. Sophiology, starting from this phenomenological disposition, attends to the revelation and gives it a name.

Both in phenomenology and in sophiology, the subject effectively places him- or herself in a childlike state: open to the world, unencumbered by ideology, perceptive to that which shines through the world. Thomas Traherne (yes, I am still working on my Metaphysical Poets course), one of the preeminent sophiologists to my way of thinking, beautifully describes this way of being:

Our Saviors Meaning, when He said, He must be Born again and becom a little Child that will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven: is Deeper far than is generally believed. It is not only in a Careless Reliance upon Divine Providence, that we are to becom Little Children, or in the feebleness and shortness of our Anger and Simplicity of our Passions: but in the Peace and Purity of all our Soul. Which Purity also is a Deeper Thing then is commonly apprehended ꞏ for we must disrobe our selvs of all fals Colors, and unclothe our Souls of evil Habits; all our Thoughts must be Infant-like and Clear: the Powers of our Soul free from the Leven of this World, and disentangled from mens conceits and customs. Grit in the Ey or the yellow Jandice will not let a Man see those Objects truly that are before it. And therfore it is requisit that we should be as very Strangers to the Thoughts Customs and Opinions of men in this World as if we were but little Children.[1]

Traherne is often (and unjustly) accused of naiveté, but a more recent phenomenologist, St. Edith Stein, would beg to differ. In Finite and Eternal Being, she describes the fundamental human condition in a similar way, though in a very different historical and rhetorical context:

The undeniable fact that my being is limited in its transience from moment to moment and thus exposed to the possibility of nothingness is counterbalanced by the equally undeniable fact that despite this transience, I am, that from moment to moment I am sustained in my being, and that in my fleeting being I share in enduring being. In the knowledge that being holds me, I rest securely. This security, however, is not the self-assurance of one who under her own power stands on firm ground, but rather the sweet and blissful security of a child that is lifted up and carried by a strong arm. And, objectively speaking, this kind of security is not less rational. For if a child were living in constant fear that its mother might let it fall, we should hardly call this a “rational” attitude.[2]

What phenomenology discovers, then, is the absolute reality of the world. The discovery of this reality in turn opens us to an absolute trust in existence. Stein, Edmund Husserl’s assistant prior to becoming a Carmelite and who died on 9 August 1942 at Auschwitz, carried this assurance into the oven that turned her into pure spirit.

But this kind of assurance is difficult for us to accept. We want to trust it, but we are afraid. Indeed, is not the acrimony so characteristic of our moment not a product of our distrust in the reality of the world? Do we not distrust reality?

Edith Stein, prior to her entrance into Carmel

Rudolf Steiner (himself steeped in phenomenology and a university classmate of Husserl’s) fully understood this human, all too human tendency. During World War I he imparted a kind of prayer to his followers as a reminder of their own ability to rest in the strong arm which carries us:

We must eradicate from the soul

All fear and terror of what comes out of the future.

We must acquire serenity

In all feelings and sensations about the future.

We must look forward with absolute equanimity

To everything that may come.

And we must think only that whatever comes

Is given to us by a world-directive full of wisdom.

It is part of what we must learn in this age,

namely, to live out of pure trust,

Without any security in existence,

Trusting in the ever-present help

Of the spiritual world.

Truly, nothing else will do

If our courage is not to fail us.

So let us seek the awakening from within ourselves

Every morning and every evening.

And so, in these our anxious times, let us call to mind the absolute reality of the world and the love of the One who shines through it.

[1] Thomas Traherne, Century 3.5 in Poems, Centuries and Three Thanksgivings, ed. Anne Ridler (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 266.

[2] Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being, trans. Kurt F. Reinhardt (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2002), 58.

Learning to See

Perhaps the most important factor on the road to sophiology is acquiring the ability to properly see. By this, I do not mean scheduling an appointment with an optometrist in search of the proper corrective lens. What I mean is that one needs to learn to see all over again. The point is that, in general, we do not really know how to see.

There are many, many analogies for this of course. St. Paul’s blindness, inflicted from the flash of light when he encountered Christ on the road to Damascus, represents one example. His sight was not restored when Ananais laid hands on him and “something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes” (Acts 9:18). He was never able to see in the first place. Those scales had been there for a good long while. We are no different.

Another, very beautiful, analogy came to my attention this week across social media in the form of a video showing a group of color-blind people experiencing color for the first time through the gift of a pair of EnChroma glasses. Watching their awakening to the world around them, a world they could always “see,” will not leave you unmoved.

This idea of “learning to see” is central to the poetic theology of the Metaphysical poet and Anglican priest Thomas Traherne (1636–1674—I’m in the middle of preparing a course on the Metaphysical Poets, so I have him on my mind a lot lately). It is a constant theme of his poetry as well as in his book of spiritual direction, Centuries of Meditations. In his consideration of the world as object of beauty, he has this to say:

The World certainly being so Beautiful…nothing visible is capable of more. Were we to see it only once, that first Appearance would amaze us. But being daily seen, we observ it not. Ancient Philosophers have thought GOD to be the Soul of the World. Since therfore this visible World is the Body of GOD, not his Natural Body, but which He hath assumed; let us see how Glorious His Wisdom is, in Manifesting Himself therby.[1]

For Traherne (and for all of us, really) this ability to see things as they truly are is a product of contemplation. “Till you see that the World is yours,” he writes, “you cannot weigh the Greatnes of Sin, nor the Misery of your fall, nor Prize your Redeemers Lov. One would think these should be Motives Sufficient to stir us up, to the Contemplation of GODs Works, wherin all the Riches of His Kingdom will appear.”[2]

Much later than Traherne, the philosopher Edmund Husserl discovered the startling reality of the world through what he called the epoché, the suspension of judgment when encountering phenomena. Husserl’s, like Traherne’s, is a contemplative act. Unfortunately, we live in an era not all that interested in suspending judgement. Husserl was one of the pioneers of phenomenology.

I first heard about phenomenology when I was a Waldorf teacher. Waldorf teachers, and Anthroposophists in general, talk a good game when it comes to phenomenology. This comes as no surprise: Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education, came from a phenomenological tradition—through his studies of Goethe (probably the founder of the phenomenological method) and also as a student of Franz Brentano (who was also Husserl’s teacher). In undertaking what is called a “child study” in Waldorf pedagogy, the teachers would attempt to do a phenomenological reduction of the physiology of a child: what shape are her eyes, ears, mouth? Is her skin dry? oily? rough? soft? What is her gait like? How is her breathing—shallow or deep? Which hand does she favor, which foot, which eye, which ear? And so forth. It is a very valuable exercise.

Unfortunately, Waldorf teachers and Anthroposophists don’t really do the phenomenological reduction justice, as all too often they resort to the writings of Steiner as a proof-test of their findings. That is not phenomenology, but they’re on the right track anyway. Nevertheless, it was not until I returned to graduate school and began an earnest study of Husserl and Martin Heidegger (among others) that I started to understand what phenomenology really is.

Phenomenology, however, is not something one studies half as much as it is something one does. It is really about cultivating a disposition of acceptance toward Things. Goethe called this reverence (Ehrfurcht). My own (admittedly feeble) attempt to describe it is as being present: when one is present to phenomena, jettisoning judgement and opinion, the phenomena can become present to our own interiority. Heidegger called this “disclosure.” That is, the phenomena show themselves to us. Another way to say this, is to say that a world is revealed to us.

This disclosure can happen with a variety of phenomena: the natural world is a good place to start, but it can also happen to us via the arts, sciences, and liturgy (whether as participants or observers).

My own searches into phenomena and meaning have led me to connect this activity of disclosure with the Wisdom of God (Sophia), as described in scripture and mysticism. Even here, though, I recognize that offering a definition is to offer a cage. Nevertheless, definitions aside, without a contemplative approach to the world we can never hope to find the Real. For now we see as through a glass darkly.

The group The Lower Lights discovering a new world in an old hymn.

[1] Thomas Traherne, Century 2:21 in Poems, Centuries and Three Thanksgivings, ed. Anne Ridler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 223.

[2] Ibid. Century 2.3, 215–16.