Notion of Sightseer

The highest point for the sightseer is not the discovery of that which is before him, but the measuring up of the thing to objective criteria.  The thing is no longer a thing as it is, but rather that which has already been formulated.  They don’t want him to share his experience but to certify their experience as genuine.  A thing is lost through its packaging.  “This is it, now we re really living, now at last we are having the acceptable experience.”

The Sightseer - Walker Percy

Notions of Castaway and Shipwrecked

… one waiting for a piece of news from across the sea.  A stranger who is in the world, but who is not at home in it.  His sickness cannot be cured by island knowledge or island news  He knows his sickness for in his heart of hearts he can never forget that he is a stranger, a castaway, who despite a life itme of striving to be at home is as homeless now as he was the first day he found himself on the beach.  There is not a moment when he doesn’t know that life on the island, being ‘at home’ is something of a charade, at the very moment when he felt most at home on the island, when needs are satisfied, at that very moment when by ever criterion he should feel most at home, he feels most homeless …. a castaway.  

Castaway - Martin Heidegger;    Shipwrecked - Karl Jaspers

a loss of memory, no recollection

a stranger to the world, a castaway,

who is not at home in it.

knows that his sickness cannot be cured by knowledge or news.

waiting for some news from across the sea

He recognizes his own dis-ease for he can never forget that he is a stranger, a castaway, who despite a life time of striving to be at home on the island is as homeless now as he was the first day he found himself on the beach.

There is no moment of his life were he does not know that his home on the island is something of a charade:  When he feels most at home, when all his needs are satisfied, a good family, success in business, at that very moment when he should feel most secure, he feels most homeless - a castaway  

One searches with the hope that a message with come.

To become a Christian is to have received the news he has been waiting for ...

Walker Percy

Notion of Gift

Any gift is in someway a giving oneself.  To give is not to seduce.  To give is to expand, to expand oneself.  Joy is not a satisfaction but an exaltation … enjoyment .. it is generosity which makes the gift possible … which seems also to be a gift. 

Gabrel Marcel

Brains are no use

Brains are no use, we want the child.  I always try to get the child to come up in people.

Baron Friedrich Von Hugel, Letters To A Niece

Albert Camus

For rich people, the sky is an extra, a gift of nature.  The poor, on the other hand, can see it as it really is: an infinite grace ….. It is in this life of poverty, among these vain and humble people, that I have most certainly touched what I feel is the true meaning of life. 

I don’t want to treat my life as an experiment, but to be what my life makes me.  It is I who man the experiment, and it is life that forms and controls me.

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942

Man is nothing in himself.  He is but an infinite chance.  But he is infinitely responsible for that chance.

We help a person more by giving him a favorable image of himself than by constantly reminding him of his shortcomings. Each individual normally strives to resemble his best image.

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1942-1951,

Metaphor of Lobster

The lobster grows a very hard shell which prevents its growth.  The only way for the lobster to grow is to shed the protective shell during which time it is totally vulnerable to its environment.

Metaphor of Fish

When we pray, we should open our heart to God, like a fish when it sees the wave coming.

Algar Thorold, editor, Readings from Friedrich von Hugel

… the life of God is no more remote from us than the ocean is to the fish that swim in it.

Rufus Jones, A Call to What is Vital

We live in story like fish in the sea. 

John Dominic Crossan,  The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story


All week I had been underwater with the whole world swimming between me and God, like a school of fish.

Thomas Merton,  The Sign of Jonas