FOCUS | From the Editor
“FOR NOW WE SEE THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
This passage from St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians sums up the human condition. As we are, we see the world, ourselves, and the sacred only dimly. But greater clarity and depth of seeing is possible, Paul promises—as does every major spiritual tradition. And when we see and know more, it is said, the universe will respond, and know us as well.
And so this Fall 2011 issue of PARABOLA is devoted to the critical act of seeing. The bold image on our cover, drawn by artist and translator Kazuaki Tanahashi, means “see” in Japanese script. Within the colorful pages that follow, Mark Boal, Oscar-winning screenwriter and producer of THE HURT LOCKER, talks to us about film as a means to realize truth, and sculptor Jane Rosen speaks of seeing as an act of attentiveness that involves body, mind, and feeling. The issue also features a stunning portfolio by master photographer James Whitlow Delano, who allows us to perceive beauty and hope among the devastations of the recent tsunami in Japan, as well as photographs and memoir by another noted photographer, David Ulrich, that reveal the suffering and incandescent beauty that can accompany deeper seeing.
These and other contributors offer spiritual insight as well as visual. Here theologian Paul F. Knitter explores how two great faiths, Christianity and Buddhism, can shed light upon one another, and in a special section, writer and teacher Hugh Brockwill Ripman offers illuminations through story and Socratic dialogue. In the issue’s featured book review, a longtime student of two of G.I. Gurdjieff’s foremost pupils offers revelations about that spiritual master’s legacy.
Poetry, too, can provide memorable visions, and this issue introduces what we hope will be a recurrent highlight of PARABOLA— poems from an array of voices that, we anticipate, will have readers singing with joy. All are invited to submit poems to us; for details, please visit www.parabola.org.
May this issue of PARABOLA help each of us to see and to be seen.
—JEFF ZALESKI
