From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordConcernment means relevance, importance, or a matter that concerns someone.
- In TraherneRepeated meditation changes what celestial things mean to the reader.
- In this editionThe word’s emphasis is on what matters and pertains to us; reading it simply as anxiety obscures the argument.
- A place to beginFrequent meditation reveals personal relevance and ownership in apparently remote celestial things.
Meaning
Concernment means relevance, importance, or a matter that concerns someone. The plural can name shared affairs or great objects of attention, rather than feelings of worry.
Use in the book
Repeated meditation changes what celestial things mean to the reader. What seemed remote and irrelevant becomes near, solid, personally possessed, and momentous. Concernment thus links understanding with the recognition that something belongs within one’s own understanding and enjoyment. The next meditation expands the scale to public matters, kingdoms, the world, and divine attributes. Their greatness initially seems unmanageable, but practice reveals the soul’s ability to engage them. Traherne contrasts this capacity with bodily strength, which can be overwhelmed by bulk. A concernment’s magnitude need not exclude it from the understanding’s profitable use.
Places to read
In this edition
The word’s emphasis is on what matters and pertains to us; reading it simply as anxiety obscures the argument.