Hope and Philosophy

I have been wrestling with the value of modern philosophical pursuits. Most every “big name” in the history of modern philosophy tends to be reduced in large part to the question of relationship, namely our position in the world in relationship to other people and objects. Some maintained that reality exists in the mind as it provides the organizing principles to interpret the influx of non-meaningful sensory perception (I believe this is basically Kantian). Others argued that the human mind and body exist as a clean slate onto which external objects inscribe reality and meaning (Hume?). I understand this to be the difference between empiricism and idealism. Both of these approaches had a confidence that either the mind itself or the ordering of the material world offered the possibility of stable consistent truth. Derrida appeared to undermine the possibility of a stable or accessible core of truth. All reality is mediated linguistically and words are only understood in relationship to other words and so meaning or access to the world around us remains deferred in its difference. Recently Slavoj Zizek, working from Jacques Lacan, states that,

It is not that we need words to designate objects, to symbolize reality, and that then, in surplus, there is some excess of reality, a traumatic core that resists symbolization – this obscurantist theme of the unnameable Core of Higher Reality that eludes the grasp of language is to be thoroughly rejected; not because of a naïve belief that everything can nominated, grasped by our reason, but because of the fact that the Unnameable is an effect of language. We have reality before our eyes well before language, and what language does, in its most fundamental gesture, is – as Lacan put it – the very opposite of designating reality: it digs a hole in it, it opens up visible / present reality toward the dimension of the immaterial / unseen. When I simply see you, I simply see you – but it is only in naming you that I can indicate the abyss in you beyond what I see.

I admit that these are immature images of these thinkers but I am quite certain that lurking beneath all this technical language remains that basic urge for knowing ourselves and the world around us. I am enjoying my brief tour of philosophical literature but I foresee that I may be wearied if I do not find a vulnerability towards the Real which these writings border on smothering. I am sure that my approach to reality could be quickly classified and dismantled by any rigourous thinker in any of these camps, however the force of authority that I once gave this views is beginning to wane (and perhaps not even enough yet).
The result so far is a renewed vision for the need of witnessing to a personal God. I mean this in no modern evangelical sense of the word. Rather I am coming to recognize that we are in essence relational beings, limited yes, but appropriately equipped nonetheless.
My early response to such stirring is hope.
I hope to return to the poetic which seeks out the cracks and possibilities of language.
I hope to return to the holy which pours through these cracks.
And approaching advent may we look in hopeful expectation to Mother Mary who lived both the intimacy of the incarnation and the experience of shame and the inability to communicate the reality within her (and really who could believe her?).
And finally I hope to find myself in a state of worship which I believe is the only posture in which we may truly participate with Triune God, Creator and Sustainer of our reality.