Leather Goods and Phenomenology

Rebecca and I were watching a show on hulu.com last night, squeezed in between Clare's brief nap and before the Boy's first waking of the night, when this Louis Vuitton commercial came on. It was captivating, and I immediately thought of Pope John Paul II. It was not because he wore leather goods.

This short clip is a perfect illustration of a philosophy that formed John Paul's thought; phenomenological personalism. Wazzat?

Phenomenology is the study of what things, people, experiences do to us. How they impress themselves upon our hearts as realities in themselves. This is a receptive way of living and growing, as opposed to a grasping, ladder-climbing, crush all enemies approach. We knock and seek and look, and behold the Door is opened unto us. We receive, we don't demand. We say "may it be done unto us according to His Word," according to Life's unfolding myriad of graces, the dark as well as the light, and see how all can lead to wholeness, to His Face.

I could watch this video all day. It's beautifully rendered, intimate and soaked with a reverent beauty, a holy longing, and shows us our hearts on a Road seeking shelter. May we all find it, the Way, the Truth, and the Life that we are destined for!