VOIR : to see 

Dear Readers, Writers, and Artists,

In the prologue to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s magnum opus, The Human Phenomenon, the French priest, theologian, and paleontologist writes,

 “These pages represent an effort to see and to show what the human being becomes, what the human being requires, if placed wholly and completely in the context of appearance.

Seeing. One could say that the whole of life lies in seeing.

To try to see more and to see better is not, therefore, just a fantasy, curiosity, or a luxury. See or perish. This is the situation imposed on every element of the universe by the mysterious gift of existence. And thus, to a higher degree, this is the human condition.”

Voir ou périr : See or perish

Welcome to VOIR – A Theological Quarterly. VOIR is an offering in seeing. A time-capsule of vision. An experiment in what happens when seeing God is given back to God as an oblation. It is a search for the more perfect eyes of discernment. As a visionary effort in reciprocal feeding, each edition will have an Aim as a thematic guiding mechanism for writers and artists to “lift the veil of repose” a bit, to better see face-to-face. The first edition’s Aim will be a version of its namesake: Seeing.

Seeing is the larger Aim of this entire review and so is purposely broad in order to see what wants to be manifested when we release our objectification of God and begin to intuitively know that God is the seeing itself.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. The eye of the heart is the lamp of the body and if this eye can see, the whole body will be illuminated.

When we drop the mind into the heart as the Desert Mothers and Fathers teach us - in order to see with the eye of the heart - transfiguration appears as the intimate Holy Ghost in the field of our longing. The burning bush aflame in our hearts. So how do the ancient spiritual practices of prayer, meditation, fasting, desert living, movement, chanting, sacred gesture, study, and work fundamentally change our vision? These aren’t the questions we seek to answer. These are the questions we seek to see.

VOIR exists to see the whole. It exists as the desire to cleanse the lens of perception and be bread and wine for the world in our relational field of exchange and wonderment. And it was born out of my simple, daily prayer for over a decade:

“I want to see what you see. Show me the way.”

“This is the situation imposed,” Teilhard wrote in the 1930s - that intellectually explosive period of Modernism and ressourcement of being. And this is the plea of a surrendered heart. So, off we go. We live and move and have our beings in iconography. The more we see collectively, the more conscious we become, and the more conscious we become - unity grows.

VOIR has at least a triple mission. Firstly, to be a home for new theology to land and be curated. Secondly, to be a field of transmission for the giving and receiving of new theology to interact. And thirdly, to grow the unending garden of God.

With this in mind, heart, and body - VOIR is accepting scholarly work from people living and writing nouvelle théologie right now. We welcome nonfiction, poetry, and artwork toward the expansion of life and all the tiny deaths we must endure in order to live again.

Submissions are open for a WINTER 2024 publication.

Yours, Fr. Benjamin Thomas, Editor-in-Chief