Stephen Watt urges us to re-imagine our public spaces as not merely neutral and functional, but places we can encounter God in and reclaiming them as Catholic yet in the spirit of the hospitable.
This is an incredible article and has substantially altered my way of thinking about places. I was just remarking elsewhere that we live in a magical world--if we see God's hand in the brushstrokes of reality. It is miraculous and artful. The quote that psychogeography is "re-enchantment" bears some meditation. Thank you!
Very glad you liked it! There's a tension for Catholics in recognising that we live 'in a vale of tears' and yet also in God's glorious world. There's a depth of experience here that secularised modernity is shutting us from.
Thanks for this, Stephen. Have you ever read the work of French Jesuit and scholar Michel de Certeau? Your remark that ‘our primary relationship to the world as Catholics is as a manifestation of God not as an opportunity for consumption’ put me in mind of him. I would heartily recommend an encounter with Certeau. I’ve barely scratched the surface myself, but readers may be interested in books such as The Practice of Everyday Life, Heterologies, The Mystic Fable and The Possession at Loudun.
This is an incredible article and has substantially altered my way of thinking about places. I was just remarking elsewhere that we live in a magical world--if we see God's hand in the brushstrokes of reality. It is miraculous and artful. The quote that psychogeography is "re-enchantment" bears some meditation. Thank you!
Very glad you liked it! There's a tension for Catholics in recognising that we live 'in a vale of tears' and yet also in God's glorious world. There's a depth of experience here that secularised modernity is shutting us from.
Thanks for this, Stephen. Have you ever read the work of French Jesuit and scholar Michel de Certeau? Your remark that ‘our primary relationship to the world as Catholics is as a manifestation of God not as an opportunity for consumption’ put me in mind of him. I would heartily recommend an encounter with Certeau. I’ve barely scratched the surface myself, but readers may be interested in books such as The Practice of Everyday Life, Heterologies, The Mystic Fable and The Possession at Loudun.
I confess I haven't -but immediately after I post this I'm off to Google to learn more!