Metaphor and the Social World

Blind beholding

Metaphor and the Social World July 14, 2026 Peter Richardson, Charles M. Mueller

Abstract This paper examines how contemporary Christian contemplative discourse integrates two apparently opposed construals of religious experience: relational intimacy with a divine entity and non-conceptual states of pure awareness. We argue that relational intimacy is conceptualized through warmth, connection, spatial proximity, shared will, and resonance, underpinned by a linked goal...