we are all lightning I read the title on a bookcover
but we are all darkning
I’m reading Catherine Keller’s The Face of the Deep. I’ve reached the chapter in which she is talking about apophatic and negative (the two are not to be confused, whereas apophatic is more about the discourse, λόγος, negative applies more to the θεός) theology.
Writing in the fourth century Gregory of Nyssa has Moses enter the darkness and find God in it.
Keller cites this beautiful phrase, λαµπρός γνόφος, lamprós gnóphos, the luminous darkness that the apostle John is said to have penetrated. This source translates λαµπρός as bright, shining, splendid, as in splendid raiment, and γνόφος simply as darkness, such as of a storm on a volcano (at Hebrews 12:18).
… François Laruelle writes:
Black prior to light is the substance of the Universe, what escaped from the World before the World was born into the World.
Noir d’avant la lumière est la substance de l’Univers, ce qui s’est échappé du Monde avant que le Monde ne vienne au Monde.
Black is the without-Ground which fixes light in the remote where man observes it. Here lies the crazy and catatonic light of the World.
Noir est le sans-Fond qui fixe la lumière dans le lointain où l’homme l’observe. Ci-gît la lumière folle et catatonique du Monde.
… &
The Universe is deaf and blind, we can only love it and assist it. Man is the being who assists the Universe.
L’Univers est sourd et aveugle, nous ne pouvons que l’aimer et l’assister. L’homme est l’être qui assiste l’Univers.
Only with eyes closed can we unfold the future, and with eyes opened can we conceive to enter it.
Nous ne pouvons déployer le futur que les yeux fermés et croire y entrer que les yeux ouverts.
— trans. Miguel Abreu, from here
…
see also here
Deborah Eden Tull in Luminous Darkness, 2022:
The global challenges we face today provide an unprecedented invitation for collective transformation. There is an opportunity to remember how to listen, see, and sense clearly from the heart. There are hidden powers within us that we have forgotten that await us in the presence of darkness. True vision is received through learning to see in the dark. I believe that …
what we need today is visionary activism.
