I feel as though I should start this column with a great big “thank you!” to God and to the countless number of people who have sent me letters encouraging me to return to the pages of The Tablet with my weekly column.

There seems to have been some confusion among some readers about why my weekly column suddenly stopped appearing. Some readers apparently thought I had retired. Others thought I was no longer writing a weekly column.

Back in April, I fell in my room and fractured the femur bone near my hip. This accident led to surgery, a brief stay in the hospital, and months of rehabilitation, which is still continuing. I had to take medical leave from teaching philosophy at St. John’s University in the fall semester, and I still use a walker to get from place to place as part of my rehabilitation.

Since April, I have been overwhelmed by countless cards and letters encouraging me to get well. I have received letters from people whom I taught 50 years ago. The volume of letters makes it impossible for me to respond, but they have been a great help as I am recuperating. They have been to me a sign and reminder of God’s love.

For this week’s column, I am wondering if readers have had an experience I have had often — reading in a book or an essay some insight that strikes a special chord in me. Once I grasp the insight, I seem to find it again and again in my experience. I am so impressed by the insight that I either tell it to friends or incorporate it into a column, a lecture, a homily, or even a book I write. Right now I am preoccupied with the notion of “presence.”

What started me thinking about presence was a response that author Flannery O’Connor gave to a question she was asked in an interview. The person interviewing her asked Flannery what moved her to write the novels and short stories that she wrote. Her response was that she wrote about what she experienced.

I think there are two poles to any human experience: the person having the experience and that which is being experienced. The meaning of what is being experienced depends greatly on the stance or perspective the person takes. The technical term that philosophers use to name the perspective or angle that the one experiencing adopts is “intentionality.” Two people can seem to have the same experience, but when they discuss it, it becomes obvious that their experiences were quite different because of the intentionality, or angle, from which they chose to direct their experience.

I will offer a simple example that I find helpful in reflecting on how people can experience the same reality and yet come up with very different meanings. Imagine that I enter a classroom holding a glass with liquid in it. I ask each of the students in the first row to identify the liquid in the glass. The first student says “water,” the second says “h2o,” the third says “something to drink,” the fourth says “something to swim in,” the fifth says “something to wash with,” the sixth says “something to put on plants,” and the seventh says “something to clean with.”

Which student is speaking the truth? Which description of the liquid is true? All are true. Each student is looking at the liquid from a different intentionality. When asked what the liquid is, a person can choose which intentionality they use to identify it.

I am not trying to promote some kind of relativism. I am not suggesting that there is no objective truth. I am suggesting that the way we look at others influences enormously what we notice or what we fail to notice.

Education should help people to embrace many intentionalities, many different ways of looking at reality.

The materialist embraces one intentionality and consequently can miss many important perspectives. By reducing everything to matter, the materialist misses important meanings and truths that transcend matter. What the materialist may see is very important, but what the materialist misses is also very important.

I think of Christian faith as a kind of intentionality. Christian faith can help the believer experience reality at a very special depth.

It can shed light on all human experience. It can help the believer see that the world is charged with God’s grandeur.

Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. His new book, “The Cosmic Love Story: God and Us,” is available on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.