Carr, Sacasas, and eloquent reality — Brad East

When we look at the quality of attention demonstrated by Heaney, Muñoz, and Hawthorne, we’re not seeing enchantment. We’re seeing an exquisite openness to the real. A sense of wonder does not require a world infused with spirit. The world as it is is sufficient. The reason the wording matters here is simple. What bedevils our perceptions today isn’... See more

It follows that, for Carr, “unenchanted” contemplation is not finally about the object in its independent objectivity but about the subject exercising his unfathomably creative subjective powers. Perception is turned inside out. Attention transforms into solipsism, even narcissism. What I see is ultimately about me, the one seeing, and what I choos... See more

What if openness to the real discloses to one’s awareness a deeper reality than one previously supposed to be true or possible—a reality not limited to one’s consciousness but objectively existent in the very thing one is contemplating, antecedent to one’s act of contemplation? Whether wonder requires a world infused with spirit is beside the point... See more

At a minimum, an enchanted world is one that is full of life, intelligence, events, experiences, agents, and phenomena that exceed the capacity of secular, instrumental reason—especially the “hard” sciences—to measure, name, calculate, contain, control, or grasp. For Christians, the word for such a world is simply “creation.” But creation is not a ... See more

the Christian doctrine of creation teaches that the surfaces of the world contain depths and that seemingly silent things have a voice. They speak. They sing, in fact. Reality, in the words of Albert Borgmann, is eloquent . Significance in the broadest sense is therefore not only a product or property of the conscious human mind; it belongs to the ... See more