The world exists independent of human thought, but it is also seen through the lens of the mind. How we see the world depends on the qualities that we cultivate inside the self to actually perceive it. Many of these philosophical qualities of perception are also qualities attendant on the art of poetry: acute physical attention, the discernment and synthesis of patterns, the attempt to speak the underlying word that represents all its surface manifestations: these are the same gates of perception entered by philosophers and theologians. The philosopher and the poet occupy a complementary symmetry in life and hear the echo of their own approaching footsteps in the other’s work. The philosopher moves from revelatory thought to articulation; the poet, from articulation back to the source of revelation. Both respect the other’s revelations, having arrived from different ends of the earth to find them.
David Whyte participates in theological conferences and retreats through keynote lectures, workshops and discussion panels with practitioners and theologians of many traditions. Using his own and other’s poetry, he brings the understandings of the poetic tradition to bear on many of the great cyclical questions of existence: how we see our lives, and our deaths; how we view others and their presence or absence; and, perhaps most importantly, what we dare to believe and what we are afraid of believing: an honest appraisal of our relationship to God, the natural world, darkness, the appearance and disappearance of form and friendship and the difficult apprenticeship to our own disappearance.
