Posts Tagged: A Circle of Quiet

“Sunsets, Ontology, and What Impresses Young Children”

On April 23, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

We had a young couple and their family over for dinner last evening.  There were two boys, about six and four, along with a baby girl.  The ground was too soggy for the boys to play out in the yard much, so they played games inside.  They wanted to see what was upstairs, but mom and dad put the kibosh on that.  Just before they left, however, my wife escorted them upstairs for a look around.  They were quite impressed.

What impressed them most were the whirlpool (which doesn’t work) and my window on the west.  It had been a very grey day, but just as my wife was taking the boys on the tour, the setting sun broke through, and streamed through the red curtain at my window.  The boys were quite taken with the sunset through my red curtain!

That may be, in part, because children are into ontology.  Don’t be frightened by that word, even if you’re not a philosopher.  Ontology simply means “the systematic study of the ‘is-ness’ of things—that is, of their essence or being.

Well, maybe it isn’t that simple after all.  If a person is studying essence, perhaps—at that very moment, and by that very action—the person is missing the essence.  The boys were not studying the sunset through my red curtain.  Rather, they were experiencing that sunset.

Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet, observes that ontology is being completely outside oneself, and that small children are perhaps one of the best examples of ontology.  “In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself.  He has thrown himself completely into whatever it is that he is doing.”

I am entirely too self-involved to be into ontology most of the time.  However, I think I’m getting a little better.  As I write this, an achingly lovely day is dawning.  New leaves on the trees are swaying.  I hear my wife downstairs, running water in the shower.  Lovely sounds.

The word for today is ontology.

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