Coracle Trust E-Reflections
Lent: The seeing
Tuesday 12 April 2011
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, Part Two, Chapter II
Ice Lens, January 2011
Read John 9:18-41 and return. Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’ They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’
Clouded seeing
As I sit here to write these words I feel obliquely, sadly but truthfully judged by the scripture I have been required to read. In Astronomy there is a phrase, ‘the seeing,’ which describes how much disturbance in the earth’s atmosphere perturbs the images of stars seen through a telescope, a bit like looking at a pebble at the bottom of a lake through the layers of water that intervene between eye and object.
What we know
In this passage, as elsewhere in the Bible, the eye is synecdochal for the spiritual health of the whole person. ‘Seeing’, being able to see, is the condition of knowing God, who is Love. The Pharisees’ main concern is to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong, to keep their power nailed down, and to drive out anyone who sees things differently. They seem pretty scared to me, on the whole, despite – or should that be because of - having the balance of worldly power hugely in their favour. There are many common ways of expressing the truism that our spiritual seeing is clouded and occluded by stuff like expectation, desire and fear. Just as scientists are unable to completely overcome the effects of astronomical seeing, likewise, tonight, I feel unable to perceive much beyond the disturbances of my own fragile ego syntony. I cannot do much about it, tonight. But I do know that although I have my fears, they do not have to have me. Stephen Wood (Senses group)