Coming Soon: Turning to Gabriel Marcel

Kirsten Oates (0:05)

Coming soon on Turning to the Mystics.

James Finley (0:12)

Our next mystic is Gabriel Marcel, and he was born in France in 1889, where he lived until his death in 1929 I learned about Marcel when I was in the monastery, and he's a philosopher. Very mystical in his guidance and his teaching. I was just struck by the depth and beauty from the very beginning. So I've been reading him over the years. He's one of these mystics that has guided me and sustained me.

Thomas Merton would refer to him in his talks to the novices. Then I was studying medieval philosophy, philosophical theology of the Middle Ages under Daniel Walsh, Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine. He would also explore the philosophy of contemporary thinkers. And it was, he gave a more in-depth taste of Gabriel Marcel.

What's so good about Marcel is that he's so experiential, and he's so practical in helping us gain insight into how we experience our own life. He says, in one sense, we experience it in what he calls existence, which are the complexities and realities and challenges and gifts of the day by day. And in the day by day, the day by day existential life, what happens every so often is the shining through, what he calls the fullness of being. And the fullness of being, which you're going to see is ultimately God, because it's eternal and it's infinite. It comes unexpectedly shining through. And so he chooses certain moments where this happens to help us recognize how it happens to us. And one of the primary themes is the thou. And the thou is where we see the beloved. We see who they are in existence. We know how old they are and what they look like in their history. We know all of that. But we, in our love for them, we see shining out from them the thou dimensions of themselves, which transcends their existence and is incarnate in their existence. And so we start walking through these different layers and dimensions of the thou, within the beloved, within ourself, and really the thou dimensions of all things, really.

Kirsten Oates (2:38)

We'll be starting this season on March 17, and we hope you'll join us.

James Finley (2:43)

Blessings until then.