This week, I will visit my brother, Thomas, at the Benedictine abbey. Although we live less than a mile

apart, our opportunities to visit in person are infrequent owing to his order's rule and the nature of the

contemplative lifestyle he has chosen. I say "nature," regarding his contemplative lifestyle, in recognition

of the variety of ways the contemplative life can be approached. Some are priests, others brothers. Some

are monastic or cenobitic, spending most of their time in a community, others eremitic or hermits, living

alone in different structures, some more primitive than others, scattered throughout the property --- here a

tiny A-frame, there a modest cabin with porch, mostly the former. Clerical or religious, cenobitic or

eremitic, the fellows who populate this two-thousand acre wood are a motley group of personalities and

temperaments, of talents and ministries, much like the woods and its other denizens. The abbey's acreage,

you see, is similarly variegated inasmuch as it is crossed, unevenly bisected, by a small river, which

is bordered, in part, by a hardwood floodplain, and, to a much greater extent, by upland pines. Where the

river, or creek I'd call it, meets the lake, is an expansive marsh that quickly gives way to small groves of

oaks and magnolias, which in turn give way to extensive stretches of pines, mostly loblolly, shortleaf and

spruce, the virgin longleafs being confined to the immediate vicinity of the cathedral, seminary campus,

monastery and guesthouse as well as sometimes densely populating the adjacent grounds of the farm

buildings and pastures. These old pines surround all of these century-old structures, swallowing them in a

sea of green. These longleafs escaped the mid-century timber harvest only by virtue of being inextricably

interspersed throughout this complex of buildings, pasture lands and ponds, surviving the clear-cutting only

by virtue of being well- segregated from the more remote and freestanding forested areas, which were

otherwise harvested. (Not speaking judgmentally, here, as monks have bills to pay, too.) This monastic

complex is further landscaped with a tangle of both deciduous and evergreen shrubs and vines and with

rows and circles of camellias, azaleas, dogwoods, hollies, crape myrtles, sweet olives, oleanders and other

natives, all conspiring to provide spectacular splashes of color during every season of the year, not to

mention the contribution of Brother Jacob's many rose varieties. This biodiversity of vegetation, coupled

with the fact that many eastern animal and plant species meet the western limit of their range here, makes

the abbey grounds a bountiful wildlife haven, perhaps a doubly sacred ground, supposing, I guess, that the

sacred might admit of degrees.

I live on the lakeshore by the river, at its mouth, across from the marshy, abbey-owned lands, which lie on

the opposite and eastern bank. Upriver, the abbey lands mostly straddle the creek. I appreciate all of this

biodiversity, too. At appropriate times during each calendar year, I thus feast on rabbit, squirrel or turtle

sauce piquant, crab or shrimp or duck gumbos, braised woodcocks and wild herb-seasoned, roast turkeys.

I catch bass, bream and sac-a-lait from the river and flounder, redfish and speckled trout from the lake. My

brother supplies me with honey from the abbey's beekeepers and bread from its ovens. He leaves my

weekly bread loaf, wrapped in brown paper, in the first pew of the cathedral after vespers every Thursday.

Our growing season is too short for citrus but the Benedictine's southshore enclave in the city, a monastic

community comprised primarily of teachers of the now co-ed high school school-erstwhile preparatory

seminary school, provides lemons and satsumas in early winter in exchange for the abbey's tomatoes and

bell peppers in the spring. I cannot begin to inventory the great varieties of other fruits and vegetables that

the abbey lands produce, cultivated by these monks who are truck farmers extraordinaire. And did I

mention the blackberries, dewberries, blueberries, huckleberries and strawberries? The southshore monks

trade their orange wine for our strawberry vintage. The northshore monks brew a cold-filtered beer from

spring water and leave their southshore brethren to languish with their Jax, Dixie and Falstaff. I insinuate

myself into any bartering between monastic communities with my steady supply of fish and game for the

monks. Most of these commodity exchanges take place wordlessly when I drive by the service door of the

refectory after an occasional weekday mass. My contact with Thomas, any given day, week or year, is

mostly eye contact, whether during a weekday or daily mass, whether during lauds or vespers, in the

cathedral church. I take my place in the pews and Thomas takes his place in the choir with his brother

monks, and we all chant the ancient, sometimes haunting, always beautiful, Gregorian hymns and

psalmody of the Divine Office. The Magnificat is my favorite. I wish it were otherwise truly my song, as

they say, my story. Not all of the "hours" of the Liturgy of the Hours are prayed publicly in the cathedral,

only lauds and vespers and an occasional office of readings for certain feasts and solemnities. I have

routinely stayed in the abbey guesthouse one week each year, taking my meals with Thomas in the

refectory, however silently, but then enjoying lively conversation after supper those nights. In the past five

years, our visiting privileges have been extended, beyond our regular e-mails and my annual stay of a

week, to include one day each season, Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter, again, following the pattern of

taking three meals together in the refectory and conversing after supper until night prayer. The Abbot

granted us this accommodation, I'm told by Thomas, as a form of consolation to me after the tragic loss of

my spouse of thirty years. She was a daily communicant at the noonday abbey mass and a volunteer cook

in their Elderhostel and retreat house. I've always been less regular but make a mass or two a week and a

couple of vespers or lauds, sometimes more, each week, but never missing Thursday vespers (and my bread

loaf). All of these worship style issues notwithstanding, as a denizen of these same woods, wherein the

specific contemplative vocations of the abbey monastic community are as diverse as the above-described

flora and fauna, I, too, am a contemplative, albeit lay. Alas, we live in an age where contemplation has been

democratized, the clergy has been laicized, the laity clericalized? We enjoy a great diversity of ministry in

our unity of mission, in our mission of unity.

This week, the week of my annual stay, is the week of Rogation Days, days which are prior to the

Ascension, which of course rotates with the moon, the vernal equinox and Easter. Each year, I adjust my

calendar, Easter variously early or late, to ensure my annual visit coincides with these Rogation Days. For

decades, living in such proximity to the abbey and sharing in the bounty of the land, river and sea, the

richness of our grounds and forest, my wife and children and I have celebrated this giftedness of nature

with the monks, annually partaking in the Rogation Days liturgies and rituals, prayers that literally marked

the boundaries of our lands, prayers that begged for our land's fruitfulness as well as for the fruits of the

Holy Ghost in our lives. Writ large, these Rogation Days celebrations are prayers of the harvests, of the

earth and of our souls. The day they begin, after lauds, we gather out front of the cathedral and face West,

acknowledging its gifts of thunderstorms and darkness, praying for strength and growth. We turn toward

the North, which gifts us with cold and waiting, praying for sustained hope and proper longing --- desire,

itself, our constant prayer. We then turn toward the East and its gifts of Light and new beginnings and pray

for renewal and resurrection in every paschal moment of our lives. Finally, we face the South, and we bask

in its gifts, a wind of warmth and a time of growth, begging for fertility of the soils of our lands and our

souls. Rogation simply means "asking" and comes from the Latin verb, rogare, meaning "to ask." I think of

the James Taylor lyrics: "I've been walking my mind through an easy time, my back turned toward the sun.

Lord knows, when a cold wind blows, it'll turn your head around. I've seen fire and I've seen rain."

I've seen fire and rain. I've experienced Merton's crises of continuity and creativity. I've been sucked into

Frankl's existential vacuum and spit out as Walker Percy's malaise. I've known the misery that precedes Bill

Dubya's first step. I've seen 'em pave Joni's paradise to put up a parking lot. I've known my radical finitude.

Thankfully, it revealed my radical giftedness. Blessed, indeed, are the poor in Spirit, for they shall know ...

... all they need to know.

So much of my spiritual journey has been spent traveling the path to the awareness that I am not God and

that I do not really even want Her job. Others report that they are desperately trying to resign such a selfassumed

position, that they've taken on that job and its responsibilities and badly want out. Part of the

journey takes us to the recognition that only one human being ever was God and that He is not, temporally

speaking, our contemporary; ergo, no one else is God either. Alas, spirituality is a funny thing, for as

necessary as it is to see the path, seeing is not sufficient. Many quit the journey here, unfortunately. Clearly,

we must go on. In the case at hand, after recognizing that I'm not God and you're not God and nobody else

is God, I must also get to the point where I can declare: "And I'm okay with that!"

I'm okay with that. It is well with my soul. All may be well, can be well, will be well ... is the prayer of

Dame Julian. So you say.

I once quizzed a good friend, asked her if she had any "nutshell" approach to spirituality. She paused and

said, affirmatively: "Yes, if one can fill in the blank to the statement 'I'll be okay when ____,' then one has a

spiritual problem of some sort." Houston, WE have a problem.

Recognizing our problem is a prerequisite to solving it, to finding a solution, to obtaining our healing.

Whether it is a crisis of continuity (in other words, discontinuity, in still other words, let's be candid, death)

or of creativity (making a difference, being somebody), an existential vacuum, a malaise, an addiction, an

inordinate attachment, a disordered appetite, an alienation of affection, an estrangement from loved ones, a

relationship breach ... ... whatever its nature or origin, it is real and, ultimately, spiritual. We are searching

for, longing for, desiring of ... what it is we most value. We value unity, community, love, relationship,

beauty, goodness, love, truth. We probe reality and employ manifold and various methodologies in

attempts to realize these values. We ask reality to yield these values. We cooperate with reality in growing

these realities. We work with reality to harvest these values. Asking. Harvesting. Frightened of the thunder

and the darkness from the West, waiting and longing and gazing toward the North, renewed and

enlightened turning toward the East, warmed and grown by the South, we experience the lessons of our

days of Rogation. What are our probes of reality, our questions, our asking ... but inter-rogatories? What are

the methodologies we employ now in this probe with this interrogatory and now with that ... but interrogations?

In our radical finitude and importuning, what are we ... but inter-rogators? Thus our

interrogatories delve into possibilities, our interrogations with their methodologies yield products known as

actualities and we, as interrogators, discern probabilities. Our interrogatories thus comprise our categories,

our architectonic of knowledge, our academic disciplines. Our interrogations consist of our methodological

approaches and their findings. As interrogators, we are organons of knowledge, singular and integral. Our

rogation attempts are clearly discernible and are nothing less than probes of reality in an effort to harvest

values, to realize beauty, truth, unity and love. Minimalistically, perhaps these are mere projections of four

brain quadrants variously conceived in Jungian terms of sensing, thinking, intuiting and feeling, or as

objective, subjective, interobjective and intersubjective faculties giving rise to our different orientations -

empirical, logical, practical and moral? Maybe these existential orientations correspond, though, to

transcendental imperatives?

Whatever the case may be, it seems like the human being can be observed in pursuit of aesthetical, noetical,

unitive and ethical values --- corresponding, respectively, to beauty and the empirical, to truth and the

logical, to unity and the practical and to goodness and the moral --- and, holistically then, the human being

pursues these values 1) objectively through sensing, 2) subjectively through thinking, 3) interobjectively

through intuiting and 4) intersubjectively through feeling, the left brain hemispheres dealing with synthetic

and analytic thought, inductive and deductive inference, the right devoted to abductions and harmonies

between, on one hand, ideas, on the other, people. There is much hemispheric redundancy and it is fair to

suggest, however facilely, that our aesthetical, noetical, unitive and ethical value pursuits engage our

objective, subjective, interobjective and intersubjective functions. If these pursuits are possibilities or our

architectonic, and these functions are our organon, of knowledge, in other words, our interroga-tories and

interroga-tors, then we might look at the various methodologies or interroga-tions as a product of these

possibilities and probabilities as they yield various actualities. To wit, epistemologically:

Objective (or Empirical) Function emphasizes a grammar of induction and, for example, an historical sense

of scripture

aesthetical pursuit - art as mimesis & imitationalism

noetical pursuit - virtue epistemology

unitive pursuit - cosmological

ethical pursuit - virtue or aretaic ethics

Subjective (or Logical) Function emphasizes a grammar of deduction and, for example, a creedal sense of

scripture

aesthetical pursuit - art as formalism & essentialism

noetical pursuit - correspondence theory

unitive pursuit - ontological

ethical pursuit - deontological ethics

Interobjective (or Practical) Function emphasizes a grammar of abduction and, for example, an anagogical

sense of scripture

aesthetical pursuit - art as emotionalism & expressivism

noetical pursuit - coherence theory

unitive pursuit - teleological

ethical pursuit - teleological & consequentialistic ethics

Intersubjective (or Moral) Function emphasizes a grammar of assent & trust and, for example, a moral

sense of scripture

aesthetical pursuit - art as moral agency & instrumentalism

noetical pursuit - community of inquiry

unitive pursuit - axiological

ethical pursuit - contractarian ethics

Add multi-factorals to these cortical functions for limbic (affective) and striatal (instinctual) brain

dimensions. Also, there are Lonergan’s conversions (intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious) and

the psychology of development (Kohlberg, Piaget, Erikson, Fowler etc) to further complicate matters.

There are descriptive, prescriptive and evaluative perspectives and an ecological rationality to account for

as well as evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. The human depth dimension is depthful, indeed, to a

whole other order of being, qualitatively and not only quantitatively distinct vis a vis other species, in need

of triadic and not only dyadic explanation, semiotic and not only neuropsychological explication. With all

of these angles contributing to our species' exceptionality as the symbolic species, one can perhaps easily

understand Walker Percy's dismay with modern social and psychological sciences and their sometimes

facile treatments. We've got to get our anthropology right prior to all other endeavors in order to truly know

how it is we know, in order to take our descriptive epistemology and make it normative.

Even if one doesn't understand the above-philosophical shorthand, that is, the jargon, the salient point is

that the table above represents Rogations, probes of reality by human beings in attempts to harvest values

of beauty, truth, unity and goodness, values which we not only harvest but which we can grow, values

expressed sometimes as nine fruits of the Spirit, sometimes disvalued as nine capital sins, sometimes

described as pursued by Jungian functions or as thwarted by enneagram-described personality foibles

(foibles often redeemed but too often deteriorating into intractable character flaws). As with the senses or

meanings of scriptures, per the exegetical strategies of the early church fathers, as scripture is multi-layered

in meaning, so, too, our Rogation Table reveals, all of our probes of reality in the pursuit of values are

layered in meaning. What is as interesting as it is disheartening is our recognition that, all too often, the

various methodologies that humankind has employed in the pursuit of value realization have been elevated

to the status of epistemological systems, one can only imagine, due perhaps to nothing more sophisticated

than a given philosopher's temperament or primary Jungian function, for example. Quite frankly, different

epistemological approaches have become nothing more than a crude fetish rather than a surgical method for

probing reality's innards. The excessive pejorative force employed by one school over another is perhaps

revealing of philosophers who, in their critiques, are not content to stand on the shoulders of their

academic mothers and fathers of prior generations but rather on their necks! These same critics seem to

often forget that gainsaying is not a system, a critique does not make a school. Thus it is that modern

philosophy has come full circle back to realism: critical, aesthetical, metaphysical and moral. Classical

scholastic realism, too often naive and hence sterile, has not been eviscerated, only weakened. Fallibilism

rules the day. Holism seems the most adequate description of how human knowledge advances and takes

on normative force. Some probes of reality return more versus less value and all who devise systematic

approaches encounter problems with their formulations, whether of question begging, tautology, infinite

regress, causal disjunction, circular reference or other inconsistencies, incommensurabilities,

unintelligibilities, incoherence, incongruence, lacking sometimes hypothetical consonance, sometimes

interdisciplinary consilience. "Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground."

I wonder, then, might we consider such as nominalism, essentialism, substantialism, idealism, realism,

empiricism, rationalism, physicalism, reductionism, emergentism, apophaticism, kataphaticism, fideism,

encratism, pietism, quietism, aristotelianism, kantianism, humeanism, platonicism, linguisticism,

pragmatism, existentialism, phenomenologicalism, transcendentalism, pragmaticism, positivism and even

scientism and fundamentalism as probes, some more productive of value than others, to be sure, all

necessary though in widely varying degrees, none sufficient, taken alone? These probes necessarily

represent only provisional closures to any consistent fallibilist, represent methods abstracted from

ideologies, tools resisting the status of fetish. They represent, then, hypotheses, working hypotheses ---

some working better than others, depending on the task at hand. It is too early on humanity's journey to

rush to closure epistemologically, hence metaphysically. With Chesterton we must affirm that we do not

know enough about reality to say that it is unknowable, and I'll nuance that - un/knowable. And we can

qualify Haldane's observation that reality is not only stranger than we imagine but stranger than we can

imagine with "for now." And if one is not comfortable taking existence to be a predicate of being and

rejects Heidegger's "why is there something and not rather nothing?" - then we can still ask "Why is there

something and not rather something else?" And we can change Wittgenstein's assertion that "it is not how

things are but that things are which is the mystical" to "it is neither how things are nor that things are but

rather that "these" things are, which is the mystical." All of this is to ask, if we have dispensed with

metaphysical necessities in response to the postmodern critique and prescinded to an ontological

vagueness, still, whither such probabilities (code for Peircean thirdness, perhaps)? What forces our retreat

into ontological vagueness? Perhaps epistemic vagueness insofar as we are not yet sure exactly how we

know what we know. And semantical vagueness to the extent that, even if we do know what we can not

prove (per Godel), can see the truth of our axioms, still, we cannot fully articulate them and for sure cannot

properly and formally formulate them. We fallback on storytelling and narrative it seems. When all is said

and done, some semiotic scientists will be scientistic (let's say, Chomsky) and some biologists and

philosophers will be, too (let's say, Dawkins and Dennett), and some theologians fideistic and others

apophaticistic, and some process philosophers nominalistic, and some thomists substantialistic, and some

aristotelians essentialistic, and others a tad positivistic and so forth and so on. Emergentism makes for great

placeholders and supervenience, too, but we can get emergentistic if we elevate such a bridging concept

from a heuristic device to an explanatory fetish. However, let us look behind all of these istic fetishes,

which turn isms into full-fledged ideologies (which is very unscientific and very poor methodology), and

see what values and insights can be mined from their isms as critiques, some more deserving of a response

than others. Thus it is that I so much better appreciate Hans Kung's use of nihilism as a foil for his

presentation of Christianity in "Does God Exist?" Rather than casually and cursorily dismissing nihilism as

logically incoherent, he took it on in all of its practical vitality ... for even if it defies clear articulation and

consistent formulation, who among us has not witnessed its social and cultural reality in lives given over to

a culture of death and self-destruction, in those consumed by meaninglessness, by malaise, in an existential

vacuum ... seeking escape in addictions, both substance and process, in distractions, in all manner of

disordered appetites and inordinate attachments? Conversely, even if our great traditions defy unequivocal

and unambiguous formulation, who can deny their efficacies when properly considered and consistently

lived with their own practical vitality?

With so much epistemological parity to go around, so many metaphysical possibilities still open, whatever

one's provisional closures, a question may arise regarding why this versus that hermeneutic even matters?

And the pragmatic cash value is to be found in the fact that our hermeneutical frameworks and provisional

closures will determine the prescriptions we devise for what ails humanity and thwarts our journeys,

individually and collectively, to authenticity via intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious

conversions. What might empirical, logical, practical and moral conversion look like? or aesthetical,

noetical, unitive and ethical? The various interrogatories and interrogations are but moments in the life of

each interrogator, who must integrate her probes of reality and not only harvest but also grow the values

sought after that our essentialistic ideals may be existentially realized. Let us face West and long for the

Beauty that has faded over the horizon with the setting of every sun and then turn and face North with its

compass of Truth, which orients us 'til, facing East we are renewed by the dawn of Unity, which begins

with the harmonies of our idealizations and conceptualizations and finds its fullest realizations as we turn

South, into the warmth of relationships with our people, with our God. And may our religions - in cult and

ritual, creed and dogma, community and compassion, code and law, celebrate the beauty we enjoy via cult,

advance the truth we encounter via creed, enhance the solidarity we experience via community and

preserve the goodness we have known via code. May our religions make us whole and authentic

interrogators, with methodologically sound interrogations of reality and interrogatories that are selected

from rogations on every compass point: beauty, truth, unity and goodness.

Such are the notes I've prepared for discussion with Thomas during the upcoming days of Rogation. "Won't

you look down upon me, Jesus ... I won't make it any other way."