"But their minds were hardened. For to this day ... that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away ... But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit."
(Paul the Apostle - to the Corinthians)
Join me, won't you, in beholding the glory of the Lord?
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Monday, June 25, 2012
Of Beholding
"The eye is the lamp of the body."
(Jesus speaking - Matthew 6)
A blind woman runs her fingers across the hem of her dress and notices a tear. She slips her hand over the smooth edge of a plate on which spring lettuce and colorful ripe tomatoes are held; she notices a chip in the porcelain. She has beheld, if only by touch.
But she has yet to behold the colorful food.
Or maybe she glances the delicate leafs and cold, soft succulent tomatoes with the tips of her fingers, and she lifts them to her tongue and tastes, with heightened sensitivity, the squish of the fruit in her mouth. Yes, she has beheld. Truly, has she not? Maybe with limitation, but she has seen much.
The eye.
A lamp.
Of the body.
Our bodies quiver at sensations. We can behold or perceive any number of ways. So why does Jesus point us to this metaphor of eye is the lamp?
The EYE has everything to do with THINGS, a myriad of things, both material and immaterial, and the function of beholding them. Receiving them into ourselves. Another way to say it is the eye has everything to do with the Nouns in our lives - the people, the places, the things or ideas that surround us and touch us - or we them - daily. In other words, our eyes and our surroundings, whether they be material or ideological, are deeply relational, whether we mean for them to be or not.
And like any relationship with which we engage, we are altered by degrees.
Jesus has a far superior way of talking about all of this. Read with me, won't you?
"So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness."
Imagine for a single moment, a human light bulb. Seriously. Sounds ridiculous, I agree. But, by contrast, imagine a human body without light. (What do you see?) I know what I see. I see death. A casket with a man. Or a woman. Expired. Lights out.
Or a young boy who has lost hope, no spark or light shines from his eyes, his soul. Or a young woman who sits despondently on a park bench at the center of a lazy town, alone. I see a one-year-old who is held securely in the arms of her foster father, just newly received into their loving home. She has yet to behold (and to trust) the love embracing her. She lacks expression. No light. No smiles. Only a weariness that no baby girl ought to know. She wears the look of care worn by a 25-year-old with three kids and no husband, not of an infant. What has happened? I don't know what happened to one so young, but today I watch her play and her sweetness is adorable. She's a happy preschooler today, she smiles freely (a bit shyly, but easily grins) and brings so much joy to me every time I visit with her family. No more sadness. None like before.
Most of us have functioning vision. But seeing, do we ever see? And seeing, what do we see?
I have an under-developed sense of concrete perception, because by temperament and by habit, I "focus" on abstracts versus concrete objects. This means I do not properly see my environment unless I am deliberately focusing on it, thinking about its details, such as, the serrated leaf on a beech nut tree, or the scurry of an ant across the dry mulch around the lilies just outside my window. I have to focus, or attend, to really perceive a thing. For example, my mind right now is focused on the abstraction of vision, not the physical components of the eye. I am focused on making words appear on a screen, but even that has little to do with the physical pecking at the alphabet in front of me. It's about the idea. So, I am attending my nouns, but not concretely. Until just this moment I was unaware of the firmness of the old oak teacher's chair upholding me, and the pressure of my right elbow on the edge of my desk, antique and finished in provincial-colonial stain. Or, perhaps, later if I am not attending, I will miss the breeze of this warm summer day moving deliciously across my face and arms. Yes, sensory vision. It richly feeds our souls.
A healthy eye. What does this mean? The answer is tucked in this clause, "your whole body will be full of light." And the assertion that follows, " ... but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness."
What makes our body full of darkness (and decay)?
A bad eye.
The stuff we perceive sneaks past our retinas and leaps down into our souls, torquing our hearts if we are not careful. Or it fills us with strength in time of need. But, if it's torquing our souls, then where lies the trouble?
Or another way to ask it: What makes the eye bad? I suspect that it's something that a trip to your local optometrist can't do a thing about. It's not glaucoma, or allergies, or cataracts, or retinal detachment or macular pucker (whatever that is, it's not that.)
A bad eye (or a good eye) has EVERYTHING to do with the THING we behold, and not just our beholding a thing, but the manner in which we take it into our souls and particularly our perception of a thing and the naming of it. In fact, a bad eye vs. a healthy eye is fundamentally a linguistic problem, and more specifically, a Truth problem. That may sound crazy-odd, but without language, a truth cannot be fully apprehended. We cannot taste, feel, smell, listen, or see any thing with particular meaning unless we can name it, and in naming, we touch the smooth skin of the plum; we hear the pounding waves of a high tide; we smell the salty air; and watch the soaring eagle.
Of beholding, we can do something about it, at least, if the eye is working normally and the brain is processing information as it should. Beholding is all about the act. It IS the observing, the attending, the being still and taking time to really see a thing (like the hundreds of tiny petals on a Queen Anne's lace growing in a grassy field or along the untrimmed edge of a country lane. Or the contemplation that love is like a balmy kiss on a cool brow).
Beholding.
The other part of beholding uses the function of our PERCEPTION of the thing itself, and this is another matter entirely, differing from the manner (physiologically, speaking). Perception moves us beyond the act into the linguistic-moral mode, the mode that discerns fact from fiction; truth from error; forgiveness from vengeance; love from hate; justice from perversion; or, discerns whether it's the time to cast away stones or the time to gather stones; the time to embrace from the time to refrain; the time to laugh from the time to weep.
I can see the thing, but can I comprehend the beauty - or the truth? I can see the hole in the tale pipe, right? I can smell the smoke on the evening breeze. I can hear the crying of the child. I can feel the balmy kiss. But what do they mean? Is my body filled with confusion - or darkness? Or light? What have I beheld up to this point? (Do I have a choice?)
"If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness." (That's how Jesus said it).
I can feel the pain of a gash on my foot, or the fissure left in my soul, long and old. I can attend to the sounds of a whispering, echoing condemnation. Or I can behold the words of love from a friend, knowing it's okay for once to perceive rightly just how good they are and okay to drink in like honey from a comb, and, so, brightening the face, giving light to the eyes, dispelling darkness. You see, Jesus over time, in beautiful settings, heals perception. All those wrong-headed things we've beheld in sinful places, all those things that make dense and opaque our bodies with darkness, Jesus replaces with himself -- the Truth.
Have we beheld Him? The person as truth, the Truth - an abstract no more - deeply relational.
It reminds me of a blind man and something Jesus did for him one day.
The fellow, blind as a stone, yet perceiving through his other senses, sat in a public place. He heard the crowd gathering. He understood what his eyes could not. He cried loudly:
"Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"
Do you see him? Can you hear him? Lots of people pushing, tugging, elbowing, some telling him to shush. But, he just wouldn't. He rightly perceived his condition and the Master. He needed help. He cried out, unashamed. What did Jesus do? He responded. He called the man to himself and fixed his own holy eyes on the blind beggar, and he proclaimed:
"Go your way, your faith has made you well."
Do we see? Jesus saw. He saw the man's vision ~ his faith, the ability to see what others could not, and the man, exerting himself with all his strength toward another man, Jesus, who bid him come, the man went in faith and beheld Jesus.
It changed his life forever.
(Jesus speaking - Matthew 6)
A blind woman runs her fingers across the hem of her dress and notices a tear. She slips her hand over the smooth edge of a plate on which spring lettuce and colorful ripe tomatoes are held; she notices a chip in the porcelain. She has beheld, if only by touch.
But she has yet to behold the colorful food.
Or maybe she glances the delicate leafs and cold, soft succulent tomatoes with the tips of her fingers, and she lifts them to her tongue and tastes, with heightened sensitivity, the squish of the fruit in her mouth. Yes, she has beheld. Truly, has she not? Maybe with limitation, but she has seen much.
The eye.
A lamp.
Of the body.
Our bodies quiver at sensations. We can behold or perceive any number of ways. So why does Jesus point us to this metaphor of eye is the lamp?
The EYE has everything to do with THINGS, a myriad of things, both material and immaterial, and the function of beholding them. Receiving them into ourselves. Another way to say it is the eye has everything to do with the Nouns in our lives - the people, the places, the things or ideas that surround us and touch us - or we them - daily. In other words, our eyes and our surroundings, whether they be material or ideological, are deeply relational, whether we mean for them to be or not.
And like any relationship with which we engage, we are altered by degrees.
Jesus has a far superior way of talking about all of this. Read with me, won't you?
"So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness."
Imagine for a single moment, a human light bulb. Seriously. Sounds ridiculous, I agree. But, by contrast, imagine a human body without light. (What do you see?) I know what I see. I see death. A casket with a man. Or a woman. Expired. Lights out.
Or a young boy who has lost hope, no spark or light shines from his eyes, his soul. Or a young woman who sits despondently on a park bench at the center of a lazy town, alone. I see a one-year-old who is held securely in the arms of her foster father, just newly received into their loving home. She has yet to behold (and to trust) the love embracing her. She lacks expression. No light. No smiles. Only a weariness that no baby girl ought to know. She wears the look of care worn by a 25-year-old with three kids and no husband, not of an infant. What has happened? I don't know what happened to one so young, but today I watch her play and her sweetness is adorable. She's a happy preschooler today, she smiles freely (a bit shyly, but easily grins) and brings so much joy to me every time I visit with her family. No more sadness. None like before.
Most of us have functioning vision. But seeing, do we ever see? And seeing, what do we see?
I have an under-developed sense of concrete perception, because by temperament and by habit, I "focus" on abstracts versus concrete objects. This means I do not properly see my environment unless I am deliberately focusing on it, thinking about its details, such as, the serrated leaf on a beech nut tree, or the scurry of an ant across the dry mulch around the lilies just outside my window. I have to focus, or attend, to really perceive a thing. For example, my mind right now is focused on the abstraction of vision, not the physical components of the eye. I am focused on making words appear on a screen, but even that has little to do with the physical pecking at the alphabet in front of me. It's about the idea. So, I am attending my nouns, but not concretely. Until just this moment I was unaware of the firmness of the old oak teacher's chair upholding me, and the pressure of my right elbow on the edge of my desk, antique and finished in provincial-colonial stain. Or, perhaps, later if I am not attending, I will miss the breeze of this warm summer day moving deliciously across my face and arms. Yes, sensory vision. It richly feeds our souls.
A healthy eye. What does this mean? The answer is tucked in this clause, "your whole body will be full of light." And the assertion that follows, " ... but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness."
What makes our body full of darkness (and decay)?
A bad eye.
The stuff we perceive sneaks past our retinas and leaps down into our souls, torquing our hearts if we are not careful. Or it fills us with strength in time of need. But, if it's torquing our souls, then where lies the trouble?
Or another way to ask it: What makes the eye bad? I suspect that it's something that a trip to your local optometrist can't do a thing about. It's not glaucoma, or allergies, or cataracts, or retinal detachment or macular pucker (whatever that is, it's not that.)
A bad eye (or a good eye) has EVERYTHING to do with the THING we behold, and not just our beholding a thing, but the manner in which we take it into our souls and particularly our perception of a thing and the naming of it. In fact, a bad eye vs. a healthy eye is fundamentally a linguistic problem, and more specifically, a Truth problem. That may sound crazy-odd, but without language, a truth cannot be fully apprehended. We cannot taste, feel, smell, listen, or see any thing with particular meaning unless we can name it, and in naming, we touch the smooth skin of the plum; we hear the pounding waves of a high tide; we smell the salty air; and watch the soaring eagle.
Of beholding, we can do something about it, at least, if the eye is working normally and the brain is processing information as it should. Beholding is all about the act. It IS the observing, the attending, the being still and taking time to really see a thing (like the hundreds of tiny petals on a Queen Anne's lace growing in a grassy field or along the untrimmed edge of a country lane. Or the contemplation that love is like a balmy kiss on a cool brow).
Beholding.
The other part of beholding uses the function of our PERCEPTION of the thing itself, and this is another matter entirely, differing from the manner (physiologically, speaking). Perception moves us beyond the act into the linguistic-moral mode, the mode that discerns fact from fiction; truth from error; forgiveness from vengeance; love from hate; justice from perversion; or, discerns whether it's the time to cast away stones or the time to gather stones; the time to embrace from the time to refrain; the time to laugh from the time to weep.
I can see the thing, but can I comprehend the beauty - or the truth? I can see the hole in the tale pipe, right? I can smell the smoke on the evening breeze. I can hear the crying of the child. I can feel the balmy kiss. But what do they mean? Is my body filled with confusion - or darkness? Or light? What have I beheld up to this point? (Do I have a choice?)
"If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness." (That's how Jesus said it).
I can feel the pain of a gash on my foot, or the fissure left in my soul, long and old. I can attend to the sounds of a whispering, echoing condemnation. Or I can behold the words of love from a friend, knowing it's okay for once to perceive rightly just how good they are and okay to drink in like honey from a comb, and, so, brightening the face, giving light to the eyes, dispelling darkness. You see, Jesus over time, in beautiful settings, heals perception. All those wrong-headed things we've beheld in sinful places, all those things that make dense and opaque our bodies with darkness, Jesus replaces with himself -- the Truth.
Have we beheld Him? The person as truth, the Truth - an abstract no more - deeply relational.
It reminds me of a blind man and something Jesus did for him one day.
The fellow, blind as a stone, yet perceiving through his other senses, sat in a public place. He heard the crowd gathering. He understood what his eyes could not. He cried loudly:
"Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"
Do you see him? Can you hear him? Lots of people pushing, tugging, elbowing, some telling him to shush. But, he just wouldn't. He rightly perceived his condition and the Master. He needed help. He cried out, unashamed. What did Jesus do? He responded. He called the man to himself and fixed his own holy eyes on the blind beggar, and he proclaimed:
"Go your way, your faith has made you well."
Do we see? Jesus saw. He saw the man's vision ~ his faith, the ability to see what others could not, and the man, exerting himself with all his strength toward another man, Jesus, who bid him come, the man went in faith and beheld Jesus.
It changed his life forever.
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