Musing on Perception

This is the kind of morning on which I wouldn’t normally post.  Because I have things on my mind, mostly related to ontology vs. perception, but who wants to read about that?  Then there are the church issues, but again, who wants to read about that?  So much abstraction in my head while the sun rises regardless of how I perceive it.  Seems to me that while perception is reality from a finite, personal standpoint, I just can’t get over the fact that things are there, and will remain so when I’m long gone.   But like I said, most of us are far too busy to worry about such things.

I’m chewing on a still warm orange cranberry scone, lifting the white paper cup with the black plastic lid to my mouth to chase the chewy bread.  Thick layers of rhythm and percussion mix with heavy covered male vocals, pulse along concrete floors, Ryan and Erin casually talking as the sound of foam heating sizzles.  Just one other patron right now, a woman at the other end of the room, her face propped against her hand as she looks to be working a newspaper puzzle of some kind.   Another bite of scone.  I’m surprised no one else is here, but I cherish the solitude, and this kind of writing, knowing that it’s about the concrete world, it’s about the door opening just now, the 30-something father pushing a stroller with a waking baby struggling to wave a hello, or is it merely a stretch?  The kid’s red hat is a rising dome atop that face o’ cute, his white blanket piled up in his lap like little hills of snow.  Erin and the father chat in that barista-customer intimacy that’s not really intimacy, but so welcome in this world where people spend so much time avoiding each other’s eyes.  And back out the door the Dad and kiddo go, travel mug (from home) steaming, safely tucked into the stroller cup-holder.  Down the sidewalk he wanders, happy as such folks are, sliding out of the frame to left, to be replaced by a woman coming the other way.  The door opens and coffee is poured again.

And so it goes.

We live in a perceived reality that is shaped by both perception and concrete “thereness” that is unconcerned whether or not we ever perceive it or not.   The interaction of physical tissue with the substances I’m introducing–“Body, meet scone and coffee.  Coffee and scone, meet body”–is happening even now, regardless of perception, and yet, the thoughts in my life somehow, imperceptibly, impact that interaction, so again, perception and thought matter.

See, who wants to read this?

But I can’t help but believe in our postmodern age that when we finally face the ontological reality of God’s being, be that whatever it is, our perceptions and the Perceived will finally coincide, and we’ll think, “How surprising.”

How surprising..