The Inward Sacred

Abstract

The sacred sphere in man does not consist, as Plotinus thought, in the sphere where the soul is all one as it was before it entered the world, but in the sparkling life of the tender love of man for man in communication. This is not a detached, impersonal goodness having only the love of God living in the soul as its object but is the unifying tie that joins human emotion/feeling with high transcendent spiritual bonds. Here is contemplative marveling over a creature for its own sake, with the marvel of Creation being retrieved, lived through, recreated in a spiritual process of progressive discovery of the elevated beauties of creation—for which discovery the appropriate means by which to appreciate them simultaneously emerge in the receiver.