On Leaping.

A photo meditation, a winter farewell and a blessing.

Leaping while holding Papa’s hand. At the shores of Lake Superior. © A. Furchert

Welcome to Cloister Notes, a letter for dancing monks and weary pilgrims and all kindred spirits who are longing for a deeper way. I am glad you are here! This is the (mid)weekly blessing, a short meditation on big questions. If you are looking for an intimate communion of fellow pilgrims join us for our daily Passionweek Consolations starting Palm Sunday by becoming a sustaining member. And if you have been with us during passionweek before please let others know what to expect by leaving a comment below this invite. Bless you.

Dear fellow pilgrim,

Today is an odd day. A rare day. A leap day. So, I thought it is about time to write a short piece on Leaping.

You might have heard about the “leap of faith”. People use it to describe an action of decision making, when it appears there is not enough information to be sure what will happen. This makes some sense as long as you don’t think too deeply about it.

The “leap of faith” is often referenced to Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish spiritual writer and depth psychologist on whom I wrote my dissertation.

But frankly, Kierkegaard never spoke about a “leap of faith.”

“Trying to see.” At the shores of Lake Superior, A. Furchert.

Which means, Kierkegaard did not have some sort of irrational leap in mind which magically transports us into the land of faith. Instead, as I wrote in an article:

“The leap he has in mind is not a leap of faith where the thinker, short before leaping, loses her mind, or ceases to care about logic and empirical argument. Instead the leap signifies the qualitative difference between conceptual spheres (say a historic truth and my relation to it), which cannot be overcome by any other than the thinker herself. Kierkegaard has borrowed the leap from Lessing’s “Sprung”, as well as the image of the “garstige breite Graben” (the nasty, wide rift / ditch), Lessing employed …”

Kierkegaard, who elaborates on Lessing’s metaphor in depth, thus understands the metaphor of the leap in its German double connotation: first as the qualitative difference between conceptual spheres (the Sprung between what and how) which cannot be bridged by approximation. And second as a willful act, or a “category of decision”, through which someone holds in tension both spheres without confusing or ever fully integrating them.”¹

There is a lot there to unpack which is not the purpose of today’s meditations.

Instead let’s try saying it more simply:

We are in constant need to leap between places where there is no obvious connection. E.g. we can know a lot but never turn it into action. We might know that some action or value is good, and that one “ought” to do it, but we still cannot get ourselves to do it (it is Saint Paul’s dilemma he describes in Romans 7: 18-19).

Thus, when it comes to existence it is not only about what I know but how I relate to that very knowing, how I engage with it. That is the qualitative difference, that is the abyss we cannot conquer, we can only transcend it through our doing.

'“Ice and sun intermingle, held by a child,” A. Furchert

The old fight between science and faith might stem from misunderstanding the gap, and thinking of the leap as a simply irrational impulse. How did we get there? At one time, logical “proofs” of the existence of God were thought to be high scholarship. Scholars seemed to be saying, “If we just know enough, if we just research enough, then faith will just follow.”

But we live in a world where facts have become slippery, and even questions that we can answer clearly also result in more questions. Facts alone do not speak for themselves. They don’t really speak at all. It is how we take what we know (or hold true) to heart, how we walk with it inwardly which decides how we act upon it (which in turn holds the whole range of moral and not so moral behavior!).

In this sense leaping does not need to be irrational. It can (and should) be a well reasoned premeditated attempt to bridge the divide between knowing and doing, the what and the how, my comfort zone and my future self. It can hold the very definition of reasonableness in practice: a continual movement from one domain (objective reasoning) to another (subjective engaging), or putting what one holds dear into practice.²

Surely people take irrational leaps galore. Master manipulators and populists know this quite well. They know that facts and faith are not the same. They have mastered the craft of instilling belief, inspiring trust, loyalty, and faith, even while the facts are made to shapeshift.

But this is not an existential leap. It is an unconscious leap. We hold an opinion and do not know how we got there.

The existential leap isn’t manipulation. It needs instead all of our being. Our intellect to deeply reflect on what we are knowing and doing, our heart to deepen and behold and embody and our spirit to bring us into the action needed.

Thus such leaping does not start with activism but with an inward movement. It requires the process of innering and deepening, of questioning and deciding, of holding and of letting go. Which brings us back to my last post on Meister Eckhart and the inner person.

Friends, we do not need to make this leap alone. Watch our girl’s leaping while holding Papa’s hand. We can, and we must, do the same. Make the leap knowing the danger, still committing our whole selves, but trusting in the hand of Divine mercy to support us. Leaping while holding Papa’s hand.

That is the blessing my husband

Chuck Huff

is offering to you today:

A Blessing for your leaping

Chuck Huff

May the infinite God offer you her hand. You can do it. I am here.

Leaping while holding Papa’s hand

I can’t do it!

Sure you can!

But I can’t!

You just

jumped over that gap back there, remember?

Did you fall?

Here, hold my hand.

—CH

And may hope leap within you, Almut (with Chuck and little one)

PS: If you can, leave a heart, a word or a line which resonated with you in the comments, so we know you have been here :-)

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In case you missed it

"Innering:" Meister Eckhart on the inner person; or why the inner person is needed more today than ever.

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1. See my article “Bringing God into existence. Kierkegaard’s philosophy of appropriation revisited” you can find here.

2. Such practice stands also at the heart of moral appropriation. For all who want to go deeper see our latest book on Moral Formation.