Thirty-five years ago someone showed me a paper with a bunch of strangely shaped sticks and odd spaces. The person said, "What do you see?" I saw sticks and odd spaces. The person said I should look for Jesus in it. I looked and looked and looked. At some point, in the arrangment of the figures, I saw the word, "Jesus." Once I saw it, that was all I could see.
Years later, someone showed me another picture and said, "What do you see?" I looked closely. In one respect it looked like a young Victorian woman wearing a fur around her collar. From another vantage, though, it looked like a haggard old woman.
More recently someone showed me yet another picture and said, "What do you see?" I knew better this time. I had seen "Jesus" before. So I was discriminating in my gaze. It was a rabbit. No, it was a duck. Finally, it was both a rabbit and a duck, depending on how I looked at it. But once I saw the rabbit and the duck, I could forever see the rabbit and the duck . . . as I can now forever see both the young woman and the old woman . . . as I can now forever see "Jesus" in the sticks.
In a class recently we talked about a mystic-way of seeing God, self, others, and life. Someone asked a question: "Why can't everyone see this way?" Indeed. It's a great question. Why not?
The "rabbit and duck" picture came to mind for me. Some of us are so locked in on seeing "rabbits" that we are completely oblivious to the duck in the picture. And some of us are so focused on the "duck" that we couldn't possibly see the rabbit in the sketch. Once we see both of them, we cannot see anything else. We will always see both of them.
That initial seeing is hard, though. We're hard-wired by the systems of family, society, vocation, and even religion to see in certain ways. We're not encouraged nor rewarded for seeing any other way. Every so often we'll realize that our traditional ways of seeing are limited and insufficient, but mostly we live trapped in the small world of our narrow vision.
I've said before that I think that's what metanoia is, the Greek word usually translated "repentance." It is literally taking on a larger (meta) mind (nous). It suggests seeing the world more expansively, seeing the world more wholistically, seeing the world as the realm of a God who cannot be contained in our limited understanding. Maybe metanoia would suggest that we begin to see rabbits and ducks and whatever other mysteries the sketch might hold for us. It suggests that we open ourselves to all the possibilities.
When I made the comment to the class about the "rabbit-duck" picture, they got it. People began to share about their own "rabbits," their own "ducks," their own challenges in seeing a world that includes both . . . and knowing a God who loves both.
It was a graced moment. It was a moment that gave me hope, both for my own seeing and for the seeing of the world.
What do you see?
No comments:
Post a Comment