Introductory notes for readers of this thesis - Theses - Flinders ...

Encounters with silence: strictures of finite existence and shadows of impendingmortalityA thematic interpretation of the text also illuminates the nature and dynamic of this silentspirituality.In ‘God of my life’, Rahner confesses his secret wish: to escape the angst and confusionof working out a life of faith, and become as untroubled by the mystery of humanexistence and the incomprehensibility of any concept of God and the eternal as heperceives most people without faith to be. Untroubled by the deeper questions ofexistence, they immerse themselves in the minutiae of their safe, familiar everydayexistences. Rahner rails against the tortured reality of his faith experience: ‘Why haveYou kindled in me the flame of faith, this dark light which lures us out of the brightsecurity of our little huts into Your night?’ 21 .Despite this initial protest, however, or perhaps in response to this protest, there emergesin Encounters an acute sense of the dissatisfactory nature of a purely finite existence andthe meaninglessness of its inevitable termination; nuances of these negative feelings aredispersed throughout the text. They emerge in response to reflections on various aspectsof everyday existence: ‘knowledge’, ‘routine’, ‘duty’, ‘death’.In his reflection on ‘knowledge’ Rahner notices that he has learned an extraordinarynumber of things during his life—both through the processes of formal education andthrough conversations, reading and recreational pursuits—and observes that he hasforgotten more than half: ‘It slipped away from me because our poor, narrow humanminds simply cannot take in and hold one thing without letting another sink intooblivion’ 22 . For Rahner, the processing of knowledge is not the ultimate humanendeavour:21 Ibid, 5.22 Ibid, 27.Knowledge seems more like a kind of pain-killing drug that I have to takerepeatedly against the boredom and desolation of my heart. And no matter howfaithful I may be to it, it can never really cure me. All it can give me is words andconcepts, which perform the middle-man’s service of expressing and interpreting60