In thy Light, we see Light: The Christian Experience of the Sky

The mysticism of light is a common feature of early Christian spirituality. This paper will focus on one case study in this larger tradition, namely, the spiritual perception of the nature of the world as blue, sapphire, or turquoise. In Christian contemplative traditions, the sky is experienced as the outer image of God’s infinite horizon, in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). After sketching this tradition from Origen (c.185–264) and Evagrius Ponticus (345–99) to Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89) and Pavel Florensky (1882–1937), the paper will conclude by touching on the role of sense perception in contemplative experience, the ways that such contemplative states mirror and invert normative sense experiences, and what makes the spiritual senses primordial or properly transensory in these Christian traditions.