Unless we call our attention to what passes beyond what is right before our eyes, we simply won't see it. Sometimes seeing in the realm of the real requires letting go of the ever-present, dominating tyrrany of the tangible. Annie Dillard writes of seeing reality by letting go as becoming "transfixed and emptied"--seeing as "an unscrupulous observer."
Spiritual masters have repeatedly spoken of the mind's polluted river--a seemingly ceaseless flow of trivia and trash that we desperately try to dam-up, but to no avail. We must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness, acknowledging its presence without particular interest while we raise our sights and gaze beyond it to the realm of the real, the pure, the silent, the beautiful! "Launch into the deep," says Jacques Ellul, "and you shall see."
The secret of seeing is the pearl of great price.
Think for a moment on Jesus' famous words that "they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not...But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear" (Matthew 13:13, 16, KJV). How frequently I fall into the trap of looking only with the eyes, listening only with the ears, and fail to look and to listen with the heart. My seeing is too often limited, fragmented, and partial.
I pray to learn to see God's reality ever more truly, ever more fully. May I--may we--SEE, in the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, that "The world is charged with the grandeur of God."
Duff Gorle
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“The world is charged with the grandeur of God."
I fail daily to see this grandeur of God but I truly believe it is all around us. It is there to be seen but most of us appear to be too busy to take the time to see it. Materialistic demands and desires seem to take us even farther away from this grandeur.
I smile when I hear atheists talk of only a materialistic world and God is only a delusion. I suspect future generations will look in disbelief when they visit museums that some humans that called themselves scientists actually believed that we are here by chance and random mutations of matter.
Although I do not believe in the biblical God portrayed in the bible I do believe that this intelligent vitality is all around us and within us. Mark twain said it best: God made man in his image and then man returned the favor.
“The secret of seeing is the pearl of great price.”
Amen to this statement. We think we see reality but we are only kidding ourselves; we see our version of reality usually peppered with conditioned and selfish thoughts.
I believe there is no such thing as space; we only call it space because we are unable to see the reality that exists within that space. What the scientists call dark matter would be better described as unknown matter. God is everywhere even what we call space.
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