Poetry and Sacred Places: Some Poetry from Western Australia

Abstract

Gerd Theissen uses five terms to elaborate the experience of the holy. They are pregnancy, competition, dominance, transparency and ambivalence. These terms are generally straightforward, but "pregnancy" does not mean, in the first place "with child" but something like "pregnant with meaning". It renders the German term praegnant - significant, terse, pithy, or something that stands out in its setting and thereby announces a meaning that grabs the perceiver's attention.