The Feeling of Home and Communitas

Abstract

Employing the theories and language of (inter)corporeality, intersubjectivity, enkinaesthesia and other related corporeal locutions, Psalm 84 programmatically depicts the doctrine of the communion of saints is experienced through the saints’ shared cognitive, affective, conative and somatic sensing and consciousness. A corporeal sensitive reading of the psalm surfaces two related embodied pre-reflective experiences. Specifically, communion of saints is experienced as ‘finding and being at home’ for such embodies the sense of safety, provision and security to be contrasted to the stimuli of dangers and threats the body experiences outside the house of the Lord. Also, communion of saints is apprehended when camaraderie or Victor Turner’s communitas is generated from the pre-conceptual tactile proprioceptive intersensory entanglement shared by saints as they make the arduous pilgrimage trek to the house of the Lord. These two manifestations of communion of saints are primarily felt and experienced corporeally than seen or heard. These latter two senses are most privileged in virtual space’s practice of communion of saints.

Keywords

• Psalm 84
• Communion of Saints
• enkinaesthesia
• (inter)corporeality
• intersubjectivity
• pilgrimage