By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. -- Hebrews 11:9-10
We are not going to make the world a better place. That is the bad news. The good news is that we already have access to and may inhabit a better world. We may call it the kingdom of God or the city of God, but it is real and present through Christ who is the Door.
I ran across a good word a couple of times recently: supersensible. The natural world is sensible. The supernatural is not nonsense but supersensible. It reminds me of Lewis describing MacDonald as "canny" in The Great Divorce.
I am truly from Missouri. I was raised to be canny by canny people. We talked supernatural stuff, and we believed that Jesus and His disciples did miraculous things, but we believed, as well, that those times had passed. When we heard of uncanny events or occurrences, we attributed them to coincidence, something that hadn't been explained yet, or someone's "wild imagination".
I believe that there is a reality, truer -- so to speak -- than the temporal, material cosmos wherein dwelleth meat and where in meat we dwell. I believe in something beyond the reach of my five senses -- the supernatural. If there is a supernatural, how do we make contact with it? Is there a super-sense that allows us to sense the supersensible?
It might be imagination, or something like what we normally think of as imagination. It would not be "wild" imagination, ungoverned or governed by the old feral, Adamic nature. It would be disciplined or -- perhaps better -- tuned by and to truth.
Prayer, communion, study, meditation, contemplation, mystic imagination, all these are means of connecting to and establishing citizenship in the City which Abraham sought. That is the world in which I am interested. As long as I am on this side of the dirt, I will be in contact with the world that so many seem to believe is the only one. I will be in this world, but I do not have to be of this world.
1 comment:
Yes! Well said. You have to believe in its existence first. So you will recognize it when you (super)sense it. Maybe intellection, rather than imagination is the term you want? I think that was the term Schuon used.
http://www.sophia-perennis.com/philosophy/intellection.htm
"The intellect is a receptive faculty and not a productive power: it does not "create," it receives and transmits; it is a mirror reflecting reality in a manner that is adequate and therefore effective. In most men of the "iron age" the intellect is atrophied to the point of being reduced to a mere virtuality..."
I think that you have to turn down the volume of the modern world to help you (super)sense. Fasting, from food, music, current events, whatever. Helps boost the ol' signal to noise ratio. In my 'umble my opinion.
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