Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Something to think about
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.
-- Albert Einstein --
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Thank you, Fred, for sharing Einstein's observation. What he says--explicitly and implicitly--adds up to an explanation about why I find myself drawn to writers like Flannery O'Connor, William Blake, and Gerard Manley Hopkins; my reading of their encounters with and their representations of the mysterious enrich my life in ways that are ineffable. and immune to analysis.
ReplyDeleteR. T.,
ReplyDeleteFor me, it's Robert Frost whose poetry at times suggests encounters that aren't completely explicable in rational materialistic terms. I don't know what it is, but once in awhile, there is something that's puzzling.