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SAW 10: Poetic Seeing
How does poetry help you see better?
Poetry “trains us to think metaphorically and to see in real things…metaphors that expand our understanding of other realities and deepen our spiritual life.” (SAW Pg. 49)
Poetry helps us connect with our emotions, and express them so they don’t become overwhelming. Since science and religious education rely heavily on the use of metaphor to explain reality, we need the flexibility to think this way to better ‘see’ those domains. Poetry also helps us bear tensions and wait for creative resolution of those tensions, or problems. We practice doing this very thing with whatever elements we juxtapose in poems, and so develop greater capacity to imagine new possibilities will emerge in response to present realities.
What does it mean to look through reality?
We look ‘at’ to collect factual data about an object. We might look ‘in’ to see more deeply into something, and thus know it more thoroughly. But we must look ‘through’ it in order to see its Creator, and to comprehend that its very existence is a gift from God. Looking ‘through’ reality also gives us access to a knowing of God that is only possible through insights gained from His creation.
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