What does it mean to be human?

Reflection Title:

Hidden Wholeness

Reflection Content:

Like Rodin’s Thinker, we ponder. In an encounter with beauty rising to greet us along a pathway or around a corner, in a piece of music, in the face of a loved one or stranger, we ponder. In those singular moments holding a newborn babe in our arms when the past and future come so near, we ponder. In the love of another, the way the world brightens in love’s new light we ponder. And, perhaps, we are forced to ponder when we sit at the bedside of a dying mother or father, child or friend, struggling to hold the mystery of what is unfolding, drawing near as life ebbs away with a suddenness beyond imagining. “There is in all things a hidden wholeness,” so sings the poet, the artist, the scientist, the thinker. We delight in it. It frightens us. Sometimes we hear its call and flee even as it rises to greet us. Sometimes we hear its call and move closer.

Story Title:

Glory and Grandeur

Story Content:

When I see Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars You fixed firm,
“What is man that You should note him,
and the human creature, that You pay him heed,
and You make him little less than the gods,
with glory and grandeur You crown him?
You make him rule over the work of Your hands.
All things You set under his feet.”

—Psalm 8:4-7

Contemporary Story Title:

To Wonder

Contemporary Story Content:

Even for Albert Einstein (1879-1955), one of the world’s most influential theoretical physicists, the meaning of life was a mystery. Yet, Einstein had an extraordinary curiosity for the understanding of science, and profoundly affected the study of physics and cosmology. He published his general theory of relativity in 1916, and won the Nobel Prize in 1921. In one of his essays, “An Ideal of Service to Our Fellow Man,” Einstein offers his take on humanity.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious—the knowledge of the existence of something unfathomable to us, the manifestation of the most profound reason coupled with the most brilliant beauty. I cannot imagine a god who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, or who has a will of the kind we experience in ourselves. I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with the awareness of—and glimpse into—the marvelous construction of the existing world together with the steadfast determination to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature. This is the basis of cosmic religiosity, and it appears to me that the most important function of art and science is to awaken this feeling among the receptive and keep it alive.”

—Albert Einstein, (1879-1955). “An Ideal of Service to Our Fellow Man.”

Artwork Title:

A Visceral Struggle

Artwork Content:

The Thinker, (Le Penseur) exists in about twenty-eight original castings and is considered Auguste Rodin’s most famous work. In 1880, Rodin was commissioned to design a bronze door depicting Dante’s “Divine Comedy” for the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The artist chose images from Dante’s “Inferno” as the main theme of his work, The Gates of Hell. Reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel, Rodin’s Gates depict the second circle of hell. The Thinker sits at the tympanum of the doors, a recessed area between the lintel and the arch. Rodin was inspired by Michelangelo’s remarkable male sculptures, however, his work does not share the idealization we often see in Renaissance representations of male heroes. Rather, Rodin expresses the enormous struggle that often accompanies deep contemplation and the way it is expressed through the body. Here is a man twisted and crouched on a rock, viscerally engaged in trying to reach the depths of human understanding. The Thinker embodies the poet-artist absorbed in deep contemplation about humanity. He invites us to join a long tradition of contemplation, stretching from Virgil to Rodin’s contemporary, Vigny.