seeing is believing
Welcome to the conversation.
Here is a message I am working on for Sunday, beginning with the scriptures:
The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good,your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is the darkness. (Matthew 6:22,23)Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? […] first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:3,5)
I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you. […] You shall see greater things then that. […] you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. (John 1:48,50,51)
Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. (John 14:9)
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Have you ever seen Fifty First Dates, the romantic comedy with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore? It’s the story of Lucy, a young woman living in Hawaii who has suffered a head injury in a car accident and has no short-term memory. To prevent her from being traumatised by changing the last thing she can remember, her father and brother have been creating the same day over and over again for a whole year. That is until Henry (Sandler) meets Lucy and begins to fall in love. But, how can someone who forgets everything overnight have a relationship with someone she never knew before the accident? Enter the comedy and romance.
I won’t spoil the film for you, but fast forward to Lucy waking up in a strange place to first watch the video that has been made to remind her of what has been happening, then she moves to the window and draws back the curtain to stand wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the completely new and unexpected scenery - a beautiful snowbound bay in Alaska.What must it be like to begin a day and to have our eyes opened to the unexpected? Instead of seeing the same things over and over again (and doing the same things over and over) what would it be like to see something quite new and amazing every day of our lives?
What might make something like that possible?
I was sharing something of this with a group of around fifteen or sixteen people last week and just wanted to check out how many needed some kind of assistance to be able to see - lenses, glasses, reading glasses, monocles - and discovered there was only one person there who didn’t need anything at all!
For me the truth follows that most of us need help when it comes to seeing things in an amazingly different way … and more than contact lenses or specs.
Annie Dillard is someone who sees far more than I do; listen to this: ‘In flat country I watch every sunset in the hope of seeing the green ray. The green ray is a seldom-seen streak of light that rises from the sun like a spurting fountain at the moment of sunset; it throbs into the sky for two seconds and disappears,’ concluding: ‘One more reason for keeping my eyes open.’
For Dillard, ‘The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price,’ and she gives this advice: ‘The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail, whetted, translucent, broadside to the merest puff.’
How do we do that?
One day a man, going about his work, saw a most amazing sight. It was a bush that seemed to be on fire and yet wasn’t consumed by the flames. I have to wonder if one of the things Moses had discovered in the desert was the art, or ability, of seeing what others miss.
I think Jesus had also developed this art of seeing. When he spoke about sparrows or flowers in the fields he wasn’t simply reflecting living in a largely agrarian society, and he certainly wasn’t being “cute”, rather he noticed things, he really saw the details we so often miss. And whilst he noticed far more than many of us do in nature and what it has to say about the relationship of God with us, he also noticed people - an old woman giving everything she had in an offering, a tax-collector in a tree, the heart of a woman washing his feet with her tears (that no-one else wanted to see, but he did).
Seeing is part of the JesusLife we are invited into, part of the mystery of life in which the invisible becomes visible, and the closer we live to Jesus Christ, it seems to me, the more we see the invisible, the more we see in quite a new way, the sharper my life-sight becomes (though I admit right now it feels as if I can only get down to the “second line on the optician’s chart”).
At the end of leading a group of church leaders through exploring their strengths (talents and abilities honed by skill and knowledge), Edward “Chip” Anderson gave everyone a pair of foldaway reading glasses. His final request was a simple one, it was for everyone to wear the glasses for five minutes each day for the following week: half the time was to be spent looking at themselves, the rest of the time to look upon the people around. His message was simple: from now on they would see themselves and others differently.
He was right. I was part of the group Chip had led, and not because of wearing the glasses, he had helped me to see a day quite differently.
The art of seeing begins in the secret place with God, the place Jesus hurried to at the beginning of each day. I have described this as the first “table” of the day God invites us to - see the meal … another serving.
This breakfast table invitation is something we all receive, coming to us, as it does, with the first-breaths of our new day. It looks quite different for each of us, and it is for us to creatively weave prayer and scripture and solitude through it, but, for each of us it is a place of deepening connection with God, who helps us to see … more.
What does it look like for you? I ask this because it is very important, if we are to become people who see, that we accept who we are as shaped by God. We will not see very well if we are trying to be like someone else or to be the kind of people others want us to be. Who God has made you to be will shape how and what you see.
In his excellent book Finding Our Way Again Brian McLaren shares how part of connecting with God ‘is that we join God in seeing.’
This thought from McLaren made me open my eyes wide. Jesus suggests the eyes are the lamp of the body, that, as it were, what or who we look upon lights our eyes and sheds light (or darkness) into our lives. This simple sentence though from McLaren expressed for me my growing desire to live this day as one who sees things differently.
Life with God is not about living a different kind of day, but to live the day I already have, differently, beginning with God. The days the disciples woke up to were just the same ordinary kind of days as we wake up to - sun, rain, winds, joys, troubles, etc. - but because they were spending time with Jesus they increasingly looked upon their days through “seeing” eyes.
Carrie Newcomer offers these wonderful lyrics: ‘holy is the place i stand/ to give whatever small good i can/ and the empty page and the empty book redemption everywhere I look/ unknowingly we slow our pace/ in the shade of unexpected grace/ and with grateful smiles and sad laments/ as holy as a day is spent/ and morning light sings “providence”/ as holy as a day is spent,’ (as holy as a day is spent).
All these thoughts wrap themselves around a phrase of just three words for me - from Dr Elizabeth Julian, a Catholic nun - instead of talking about practicing our faith, we must explore ‘faithing our practices.’
This is quite simply what Jesus did. On a hillside, with his disciples and a growing crowd, he taught how a deeper life is not a to-do list of great things to be done by great people, rather, the ordinary things of life being carried out with love and goodness and kindness brought out from deep within people. These included: how we speak to one another; relationships between husbands and wives; business relationships; and, friendships. Jesus invites those who would follow him to see all these differently.
Leonard Sweet has correctly said: ‘The spiritual life has earthly dimension - it is a life you can taste, and smell, and touch, and see, and hear. It is reality.’ (The Gospel According to Starbucks).
We are amongst those who realise there is no greater calling in life than to take time - and to use our time - so that we might see God and see people differently. We become helpers of one another and helpers of others, as John Wesley encouraged his people to: “build them up in that holiness without which they cannot see the Lord”.
I understand that the words miracle and mirror come from the same Latin root (miro - to wonder, and mirus - wonderful). What do we see, who do we see, as we look into this mirror? What do we see, who do we see, as we put on those new glasses that help us to see God, to see others, even as we see ourselves … differently?
Leonard Sweet asks, ‘do you wonder and admire the one-of-a-kind miracle you are?’ I would add whether we see this in the lives of the people around us? And perhaps we gasp, because we have seen something more clearly.
Do you see what I mean? There is more to see than you wake up to now. God is waiting to meet with us, so that he might touch our eyes so we look upon a day with wide-open eyes, and perhaps with wide-mouthed wonder.
“Look where you’re going!” may then be less of a warning and more of a promise.
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Here are some questions you might find helpful to think through:
- How did the words of Carrie Newcomer help you to look upon your day differently?
- I suggested that Moses was someone who had learned to use his time to see more. Do you agree? What might have contributed to forming this seeing ability in him?
- Do we tend to value or undervalue people like this?
- Annie Dillard says the secret of being sensitive to all that is around us is to ‘Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail’. Is this your experience? What are some of the practices you employ to be more sensitive?
- Brian McLaren suggests there is a link between connecting with God and seeing more. Is this your experience? What other things have helped you to see more?
- Do you feel comfortable with seeing yourself as something wonderful? Why did you answer as you did?
August 10th, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Hi Geoffrey
As usual a really thought provoking piece. Thanks.
“Moses was someone who had learnt to spend time in seeing.” And there’s the rub. In our education system and lives we don’t spend enough time teaching people to see properly, so consequently we go through our ever speedier lives glancing and getting distorted snippets from which we make our decisions. We have hands, but we have to learn to write, hold tools etc, we have mouths but we have to learn to form words and speak etc etc. But we just assume because we have eyes we can see and in these days of quick makovers superficial seeing is at the fore! How we look, how others see us, nip and tuck etc. The true meaning of seeing is more than skin deep! “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”. (John 14:9)
We get the majority of our information through our eyes. Touch, smell, hearing and taste are minor players, but when all are combined through doing the bigger ‘picture’ takes shape.
Just seeing is not enough. As you say, “the ordinary things of life being carried out with love and goodness and kindness brought out from deep within people……..We become helpers’of one another and helpers of others, even as we are also helped by people, to see. John Wesley encouraged his people to: “build them up in that holiness without which they cannot see the Lord”.”
There is a very well known saying by Confucius
“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
We often use the phrase ‘I see what you mean’, meaning that we understand. Even blind people use the phrase. I think sometimes we need to just hear and do and miss out the physical seeing because the seeing (understanding) only comes from the doing. Jesus called the diciples and they went, but they only really understood why by following him, until they too were ready to do what he commanded.
Sorry if this is a bit of a ramble.
August 11th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Hi, Peter,
Thanks for the things you share. I’ve rewritten the piece as it didn’t emphasise enough the most important seeing is of one another - which is what I wanted it to. I will be working on it more towards Sunday.
One of the ongoing things I know I must develop is my longsightedness - by that I mean how I extend the goodness I seek to do to others to those who are further away and less like me.