Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[RHONDA MCDONNELL <rhonda_mcdonnell AT msn.com>]

I was catching up on a back issue of The Sun, and was struck by the Percyan thinking in Diane Covington's interview of John O'Donohue. O'Donohue's first response is below:

 

There is a fierce hunger for spirit at the heart of an American culture that has lost all belief in the old language

about God. That language no longer resonates for most Americans, nor leads them to wells of nourishment. Ironically,in other areas of American culture, there is a fundamentalist obsession with God. But inevitably this God tends to be a monolith and an emperor of the blandest singularity. Attentionto the living God, who incorporates the beauty of the senses and spirit, and is the deepest source of the imagination and the highest calling of intellect, seems very scarce. New Age spirituality is rising up to try to fill the gap. I do not wish to criticize any system that can nourish people’s spirits, but I find that a lot of New Age writing cherry-picks the attractive bits from the ancient traditions and makes collages of them; it usually excises the ascetic dimension. In general it is not rigorously thought out, but is what I would call “soft” thinking.

--John O'Donohue--

You can see more of the interview (but not all of it) at this url: http://www.thesunmagazine.org/376_O'Donohue.pdf

--Rhonda

"You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing."
  
                                    Walker Percy

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