Listen...To The Field: The Atlantic’s The Permanent Questions
How do you describe something that feels deeply spiritual when the usual religious words don’t quite work for you? 🌌💭 In a conversation for The Atlantic’s The Permanent Questions, writer Ayad Akhtar joins David Brooks to talk about mystical experience, attention, the soul, transcendence, and the inner transformation at the heart of Akhtar’s new novel, The Radiance. 🎧📖✨
Akhtar describes part of his project as searching for secular language for inner experiences that seem to exceed a secular frame. He and Brooks spend the conversation reaching for words to describe experiences that can be difficult to explain at all, let alone fit neatly into a religious or nonreligious box. 💬🌀 Akhtar also reflects on how paying close attention to his own inner life opened him to experiences he struggled to name.
For those of us listening to the spiritual lives of others, there’s something worth noticing here. 👂🏽💛 People may be experiencing longing, wonder, transcendence, connection, and mystery long before—or without ever—calling those experiences “religious.” Instead of beginning with the vocabulary, maybe we can listen first to the experience being described. 🌱✨
A question worth carrying with us: Are we listening closely enough to recognize spiritual longing when people use different words for it? 🎧💭
