Some opening lines to ponder of a new book I (Kirk) am starting:
“In itself, perspective exercises a paradox…The paradox attests to the visible, while at the same time opposing itself, or rather while inverting itself; literally, it constitutes a counter-visible, a counter-seen, a counter-appearance that offers in a spectacle to be seen the opposite of what, at first sight, one would expect to see. More than a surprising opinion, the paradox often points to a miracle – it makes visible that which one should not be able to see and which one is not able to see without astonishment.”
Book cover for Jean-Luc Marion’s book “The Crossing of the Visible”
Seeing the unexpected – something that appears extreme even contradictory to reality – for Marion, astonishes and is nothing less than a miracle. We live with the seen. But do we also live with the unexpected? When we interact with what we see and the “counter-appearance” of that, how do we respond? Are we “astonished”, as Marion purports? Is this what happens when people are in the presence of an actual miracle? Imagine what it was like when the people following Jesus saw a blind person see, and even the dead raised. Marion would seem to say this even happens in the “light bulb” moments of life when we see it as even more amazing than we did before.
More on this as I read further