Reflection: Platonic Sensibility - Mary Ragan

I was thinking about what we talked about in class on Tuesday relating to the reading about platonic sensibility. This is the idea that earthly things take us away from God. After climbing Mount Ventoux and admiring the "earthly things," Petrarch then turns away and is angry at himself after reading Augustine's Confessions. Petrarch rejects the earthly things to have spiritualness and thinks of the beauty of the world as being a distraction. I was thinking about how strange this sounded to me because the "earthly things" are God's creation. I think that we should marvel in what He has created and how mighty He is to have created it. I think that this is how some people really encounter God, by witnessing to things so wonderful and sometimes even being overwhelmed by things that He has created. People want this knowing of God's presence and I think they often find it through the earthly things. I know that I feel like I have encountered God through nature's wonders like the ocean or a sunrise. We talked about God being both transcendent and immanent which is interesting, although I don't know that I completely understand. I guess that we understand God as being beyond this world but then also experience God through our senses through seeing and experiencing His creation.