In work and in religion, we paint in a constricted ontological palette. That is, we acknowledge certain ways in which an entity can be, and neglect or deny others.

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Facts, knowledge . . . doctrines, “faith” as beliefs.

Techniques, methods, processes . . . traditions, customs, rituals.

Things, artifacts, outputs, products . . . holy places, relics, books.

People, roles . . . leaders, authorities, fellow believers.

Ethics, manners, prudence . . . morality, laws, acts.

Plan . . . destiny, providence.

Objective . . . judgment.

Brand . . . symbols.

Feelings . . . passions.

Career path . . .  spiritual path.

Self . . . soul.

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These thingly things I’ve listed — things we can “wrap our minds around” and comprehend — ideas, methods, products, people, ethics, growth, plans, goals, selves, etc. — all orbit about an essential “one thing needful”, and it is that thing that invests what orbits them with coherence and meaning.

This is not to denigrate things. They are important. We need things in all their variety. But when we fret exclusively over the periphery of thingness, the center vanishes, breaks up, dissipates and loses its capacity to pull the myriad things of the world into relation.

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“The Second Coming”

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

– W. B. Yeats

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Even our religion is industrial. Or was our industry formed in the image of what religion has become? Assembly-line ontology.