{"id":2400,"date":"2014-09-12T09:35:08","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T09:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=2400"},"modified":"2014-09-12T09:37:08","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T09:37:08","slug":"seeing-is-believing-much-ado-about-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/seeing-is-believing-much-ado-about-something\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing is Believing: Much Ado about Something"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Clint<\/a><\/p>\n

(“Home – Morning Coffee While Reading Ionesco’s Rhinoceros: \u00a0A Study in Brown & ‘Texturality.'”)<\/p>\n

The above is an image and its title that I posted earlier this week on my Instagram and Facebook accounts. \u00a0I really liked all of the varied shades of brown, textures, and lines involved. \u00a0But, what I really want you to note is the term “Texturality” that I thought I might have made up, but apparently it’s been used a little in other places — I didn’t find a lot on it immediately. \u00a0Anyhow, the term ‘texturality’ for me\u00a0suggests\u00a0an important combinatory aspect between text and materiality\/image that is vital for Morgan’s work we’ll be reflecting on here.<\/p>\n

David Morgan\u2019s The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

I like this book. It has substance. It goes deep, scans broadly and offers insight and surprise along the way. It doesn\u2019t pander to the lowest common denominator of understanding. You\u2019ve got to work a bit to glean its insights.<\/p>\n

So, let\u2019s do a bit of gleaning work and see if we might come away with a little something.<\/p>\n

Jacques Derrida has a famous phrase, \u201cil n’y a pas de hors-texte<\/em>.\u201d This means there is nothing outside the text or there is nothing other than text. For Derrida, this phrase describes that there is no reified, objective position from which all other aspects of life might be finally, once-and-for-all, \u201cappropriately\u201d critiqued. We are in the middle\/muddle of things; we navigate in the mi(d)st.<\/p>\n

Related to our current text we might offer that, \u201cthere is nothing that is not image.\u201d Everything we encounter is a particular symbolic construction of understanding developed from a specific viewpoint. \u201cText\u201d itself is a particular form of \u201cimage\u201d (the opposite could be suggested too, but that\u2019s a reflection for a different time). There is a short phrase that tongue-in-cheek metaphysically suggests this perspective to certain extent, \u201cwhat you see is what you get.\u201d Of course, in another sense, we always get far more than what we see as seeing is always limited and awaits further \u201cin-sight.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea of double-meaning contained in \u201cin-sight\u201d leads well into considering a conceptual overlap between two terms that we have in English that I very much appreciate: \u201cI see\u201d and \u201cI understand.\u201d These two terms strongly showcase the link between our external senses and our internal processing. In a sense, we could write \u201cviewing-thinking\u201d as a single term. Of course, we typically mean optical functionality when we talk about \u201cseeing\u201d as one of the senses. I am thinking of it as this as well, but I am also thinking of it more broadly and inclusively as understanding obtained with the senses overall. For instance, those blind in their eyes are said to be able to \u201csee\u201d with their fingers, bats \u201csee\u201d with echolocation, Morgan writes of Buddhist, Sikh, and Hindu chanting as a powerful \u201cicon\u201d (referencing the visual through hearing),[1]<\/a> etc.<\/p>\n

The above thoughts are some pieces that interest me and correspond to Morgan\u2019s discussion of gaze<\/em>, seeing<\/em>, and belief<\/em>.[2]<\/a> I appreciated that Morgan notes his being less interested in the debate about differences of word and image and more interested in the \u2018slippage\u2019 between them where they find affinity.[3]<\/a> He writes about the gaze as a term representing contextually interconnected connotations that allow an understanding to form \u2013 for good and for bad. From this gaze, beliefs are formed. Morgan discusses the words tenet and creed in relation to belief and delineates that these terms come from the Latin tenere<\/em> (to hold) and credo<\/em> (I believe).[4]<\/a> In relation to this text, I am reminded how we think of belief at times related to the idea of sight with references to the \u201cinner eye,\u201d the \u201cthird-eye,\u201d or the \u201ceye of the soul.\u201d This moves toward Morgan\u2019s orientations of the visuality of belief. However, overall, Morgan is less focused on the theory of belief and more on the doing of belief \u2013 more focused on orthopraxy than orthodoxy (without fully bifurcating them).[5]<\/a> Everything is undergone in a context or, for Morgan, a medium<\/em>. In fact, we navigate life in multiple media<\/em>. The use of medium and media showcase a quick connect to visuality.<\/p>\n

Of course, Morgan\u2019s book is not just on gaze, but on \u201csacred gaze.\u201d He defines such gaze as a look which opens understanding of the intangible through the visioning of an image. I find this a reasonable definition with the allowance of a caveat arising from attention to Mircea Eliade\u2019s The Sacred and the Profane<\/em>, that for those \u2018with eyes to see\u2019 (to use an apropos<\/em> phrase) the whole world is sacred.<\/p>\n

I find it interesting that the Scriptures state in John, \u201cin the beginning was the Word\u201d and also God showcased in Genesis as saying, \u201clet us make humanity in our image.\u201d This is an example of textual\/visual slippage that Morgan suggested can be found to be present. We are created in the Image of a Word and let know about this imaging through words. That should confound a few people for awhile.<\/p>\n

As well, we should take into account the Scripture related to Thomas the disciple in John 20:24-29:<\/p>\n

24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin[c]), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, \u201cWe have seen the Lord.\u201d But he said to them, \u201cUnless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.\u201dz<\/p>\n

26 A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, \u201cPeace be with you.\u201d 27 Then he said to Thomas, \u201cPut your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.\u201d 28 Thomas answered him, \u201cMy Lord and my God!\u201d 29 Jesus said to him, \u201cHave you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

This passage has too often been used to focus on Thomas\u2019s supposed lack of faith. However, I think it can better be showcased as an affirmation of Jesus\u2019s love for Thomas and as an added affirmation for those who in the future would not have the aid of visuality in the same manner. This need not be taken as disparaging commentary toward seeking being able to see, but instead as added affirmation of those journeying through difficult territory of visual absence. That is, there is no negativity in the passage, but instead only goodwill to all involved.<\/p>\n

Reading through Morgan\u2019s text also reminded me of Jacques Derrida\u2019s reflections of the eye and visuality in his The Gift of Death<\/em>. In this text, in his chapter, \u201cTout Autre Est Tout Autre,\u201d Derrida discusses \u2013 out of Matthew 6 — the eye being primarily\u00a0not the window to the soul, but more so the window from the soul. \u201cThe organ of sight begins by being a source of light. The eye is a lamp. It doesn\u2019t receive light, it gives it.\u201d[6]<\/a> I think this is a powerful reminder for us as Christ-followers living in the world. If we are to be about redeeming the time and seeking to be God\u2019s people of reconciliation, then we will need our internal compass in the mi(d)st of all of the contextual complexity surrounding us to offer\/project visions of hope.<\/p>\n

For example, if our eyes are well attuned then even those of primarily iconoclastic religious orientation can come to see a black stone as a sacred object which facilitates their greater beliefs \u2013 as with Muslims and the stone in the Ka\u2019bah.[7]<\/a>\u00a0Some people would have a similar understanding of the Bible as a book.\u00a0The idea is not to fool ourselves into creating idols out of inanimate objects, but instead to recognize that all exists as a representative channel to greater Reality. \u00a0How such things are understood and utilized is a further discussion.<\/p>\n

Finally, thinking of the sacredness of all life, as I was reading Morgan\u2019s text, I ran across notes I scrawled on a napkin sometime ago and apparently then left in the front of a small book by Philip Pullman called Lyra\u2019s Oxford<\/em>. Anyhow, in attempting to reconstitute the meaning of my scrawled notes in my mind, I noticed that I had taken the concept of the mirror written about by Jacques Lacan, the concept of the Other written about by Emmanuel Levinas and the concept of the heart\/eyes as windows as written about by Jacques Derrida and made a quote weaving the ideas together.<\/p>\n

Here it is, \u201cThe mirror of our soul lies through the window of the Other.\u201d<\/p>\n

As you read Morgan\u2019s text and think about the potential of the sacralization of images, remember that it\u2019s not just \u201cwe are what we see,\u201d but also \u201cwe see what we are.\u201d \u00a0What do you see? Who are you?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice<\/em>, (Berkeley\/Los Angeles, CA: Univ. Of California Press, 2005), 10.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 1-24.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 10.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 6.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid., 6-11; 288.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death<\/em>, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995), 99.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Morgan, 15,16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(“Home – Morning Coffee While Reading Ionesco’s Rhinoceros: \u00a0A Study in Brown & ‘Texturality.’”) The above is an image and its title that I posted earlier this week on my Instagram and Facebook accounts. \u00a0I really liked all of the varied shades of brown, textures, and lines involved. \u00a0But, what I really want you to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[496,497,498,284,499],"class_list":["post-2400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-derrida","tag-lacan","tag-levinas","tag-morgan","tag-texturality","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2400"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2403,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2400\/revisions\/2403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}