Gabriel Marcel: Session 2

Turning to the Mystics with James Finley

Center for Action and Contemplation

Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

This is the second session that focuses on the philosophy of Gabriel Marcel. In the tenor of the ancient practice of Lectio Divina, James Finley reads passages from Kenneth T. Gallagher's The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel, reflects on the qualitative essence of the spirit of this text, and finishes with a meditative practice. Resources: Turning to the Mystics is a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more about James Finley, visit his faculty profile here. The transcript for this episode can be found here. The book we will be using this season can be found here. Connect with us: Have a question you'd like Jim or Kirsten to answer about this season? Email us: [email protected] Send us a voicemail: cac.org/voicemail We'll be accepting questions for our Listener Questions episode until May 13th, 2025. This podcast is made possible, thanks to the generosity of our donors. If you would love to support the ongoing work of the Center for Action and Contemplation and the continued work of our podcasts, you can donate at https://cac.org/support-cac/podcasts/ Thank you!

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation.
0:04.0	To learn more, visit cac.org.
0:09.8	Greetings. I'm Jim Finley.
0:13.2	Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.
0:31.9	Greetings, everyone, and welcome to our time together, turning for trustworthy guidance to the teachings of Gabriel Marcel.
0:57.4	In the introductory session with Kirsten, and also in the previous session, we explored the way Marcel tries to help us cultivate a spiritual worldview, how to be established an experiential, spiritual understanding of ourselves, others in all of life, really. And we saw at the very heart of this vision, this is his distinction on the winding path
1:00.1	between problems and mystery.
1:03.5	Problems in life, those problems
1:06.2	where we seek a solution or an answer
1:09.0	to things that are dualistically other than ourselves.
1:12.6	So the example we use is if our car won't start, or if there's a leak in the roof,
1:17.6	or if we're trying to find the answer to a complex math problem, all these are problems.
1:24.6	And in the facing of a problem, we look for a method to solve the problems, where we go to
1:29.8	someone who's trained in that method to solve the problem. And then once it's solved, we're done.
1:34.8	We move on to the next problem. But mystery is very different. Mystery, we realize that when we turn
1:42.9	towards things that are mysterious or mystery, we ourselves
1:47.6	are included in what we're turning towards.
1:50.5	So if I ask, what does it mean to be a human being?
1:53.6	It's I as the human being that I am that's asking what does it mean to be a human being.
1:58.1	If I ask, what is consciousness?
2:00.5	It's I in my consciousness is asking about consciousness. If I ask, what is consciousness? It's I in my consciousness, is asking about
2:02.9	consciousness. If I ask what is love, it's me and my desire to love and be loved, just asking what is
	...

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