Living-Into Presence, Wonder, and Play

This chapter develops three pivotal themes for affecting others such that they become more attentive to participating in a non-individualistic account of the imago Dei understood as being an ‘artful planet’: presence, wonder, and play. These themes are equiprimordial existential structures that aid us in ordering human experiences. Presence, broadly speaking, is a disposition or orientation; it names an existential commitment to being aware of the intra-active, non-separable difference that subtends our lived experiences. Wonder is a mood or an attitude that allows the world to appear to us with an openness or ‘making proximate’ of those desires that are askew to our predominant, norming orientations: an attentiveness to disorientations. Finally, play is an expression of freedom. It allows us to explore and construct worlds of other possibilities that are engrossing; with these acts of imagination we act ‘as if’ this possible world is, which then imparts meaning to our ordinary living in the world.