Contemplative Realism

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>As ever but especially in our present age of raging post-truth unreality we ought to heed Pope Benedict XVI's summons to ask rather more carefully what 'the real' actually is. So-called realism can blind us-instead of binding us-to things as they are. Are we not interested in the cosmos anymore? Benedict asks. Are we today really hopelessly huddled in our own little circle? If this preeminent mind of our time is not wrong and the man who puts to one side the reality of God is a realist only in appearance then we ought to ask with unflinching intensity and openness: what is real? Like liturgy literature asks this question with a range of forms that answer it very differently. At times both art and worship seem to devolve into the manners and mood of self-referential and inconsequential play gestures without meaning or bank notes (says Benedict) without funds to cover them. These too-closed circles of communication wall off transcendence. In living cruciform liturgy-on the contrary-the congregation does not offer its own thoughts or poetry but is taken out of itself and given the privilege of sharing in the cosmic song of praise of the cherubim and seraphim. In living contemplative literature something analogous happens: we suffer and praise with the whole of creation; the prose cultivates a grateful disposition prompting us to yearn for a vision of the whole.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>But this manifesto on behalf of a contemplative realism makes no claims to create </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>ex nihilo</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> a new aesthetical species. Rather it seeks to articulate a literary approach that exists already in diffuse books as well as in the potencies of living artists. It seeks to gather and galvanize those souls. More than anything it yearns to quicken a contemplative realist disposition among as many comers as possible-literary chops or no. For in a very bad way (to borrow from Josef Pieper) man's ability to see is in decline.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Joshua Hren is founder of Wiseblood Books and co-founder of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas Houston. His books include: the short story collections </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>This Our Exile </em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>and </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In the Wine Press</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>; the book of poems </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Last Things First Things & Other Lost Causes</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>; </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Middle-earth and the Return of the Common Good: J.R.R. Tolkien and Political Philosophy</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>; </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>How to Read </em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>(</span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>and Write) Like a Catholic</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>; and the novel </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Infinite Regress.</em></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>