What is our Dual Allegiance?

I had the temerity to put two of my photographs with a sublime piece of writing by A J Heschel:

The search for reason ends at the shore of the known;
on the immense expanse beyond it
only the sense of the ineffable can glide.
It alone knows the route to that
which is remote from experience and understanding.

Neither is amphibious:
reason cannot go beyond the shore,
and the sense of the ineffable
is out of place where we measure, where we weigh…….

Click separatelyreflection-water-sky-rock.jpgtime-clock-railway-station.jpg to enlarge…


Citizens of two realms, we must all sustain dual allegiance:

we sense the ineffable in one realm;
we name and exploit reality in another.

Between the two we set up a system of references,
but can never fill the gap.
They are as far and as close to each other as time and calendar, as violin and melody,
as life and what lies beyond the last breath.

The tangible phenomena we scrutinize with our reason,
The sacred and indemonstrable we overhear with the sense of the ineffable.

Heschel A. J. (1971), Man is Not Alone, New York: Octagon Books p.8