Sensing Lent 37: Eyes

The eyes have been described as the window to the soul. What we look upon has an effect upon us. According to the Sermon on the Mount, 'the eye is the lamp of the body, so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness' (Matthew 6:22). 

There's clearly something more than a physical description going on here - the eyes being used as a metaphor for wholesomeness in our perception, maybe? Perhaps it means that if we bring a jaundiced view to the world, we only see rottenness; if we 'see' with goodness, we bring that same quality to our experience of life...?

In today's gospel, Peter finds himself the object of Jesus' lingering gaze. It is a poignant moment, the one after Peter has denied his friend and Lord. One can only imagine what that gaze looked like - the searing eyes, the pain in them. People have tried to capture that gaze in paintings. No doubt his eyes also sought out the core of Peter when he lovingly reinstated him on the beach after the resurrection.

We often avoid each other's gaze, because it takes some courage to really try and see into what makes someone else tick, and let them do the same for you. A lingering gaze can mean all sorts of things, especially between genders, which we might shrink from. I was a bit flummoxed when one of the Bishops' Advisors on the selection conference I was on, after I shared something slightly personal, said 'I can tell from your eyes.' Frankly, that was going a bit far for me, especially as I didn't know him from Adam, even though I'm sure he had all the right spiritual, and probably psychological, training.

But I suppose you can tell things from looking into people's eyes. And thereby souls...It amuses me that when I'm out and about in the sunshine, sometimes without my collar and wearing sunglasses, lots of people don't recognise me at all. Occasionally that can feel rather nice.

Sensing Lent 36: Road

Jesus was often on the road. Apart from being, literally, outdoors for a lot of his ministry, the road, or 'the way' was a metaphor for going in a certain direction in his life, going God's way, being open to fellow travellers and averse to settling in one place, for the sake of the kingdom. Eventually his road narrowed and turned towards death - on the road to Jerusalem. 

Others joined him on the road, like blind Bartimaeus and the women and other disciples who followed him; and now we're on the road that is called Holy Week, seeking to walk the way of the cross with him, as far as we are able.

Literary tropes of the road include Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957), a book simultaneously about a literal journey across America and a journey of personal self discovery outside of the mainstream, via jazz, poetry and drug use. 

An even more depressing tale is Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2006), a post -apocalyptic story of a father and son travelling on the road through ecologically devastated countryside, trying to reach the sea with a few meagre possessions and a father's terrible burden of protecting a hungry child.

Whether narrow or wide, smooth or full of potholes, going towards death or towards safety, travelled alone or in company, a road always stretches out ahead, and it must be walked. 

Sensing Lent 35: Garden

There's something about sitting in the garden which is quintessentially English. I'm a simple gardener - as long as the lawn is mown and there's a few flowers in a small bed, easy to keep, preferably perennials which come up every year with no input from me; some herbs in pots, a couple of chairs, some shade, and I'm happy. 

I tend to have an 'out of sight out of mind' approach to gardening - when I'm not in the garden I never think about it - but when the sun comes out and I start wandering about out there, I notice things which need weeding, sweeping, cutting, re-potting, digging; and then I'm more likely to begin to get my hands dirty. There's something very grounding about getting your hands in the earth. It relieves the thoughts and settles the mind. At some basic level I suppose we know we're going back there one day.

The original garden (of Eden) can be read as a metaphor for our primary innocence - Adam and Eve tilled the soil in which were all kinds of plants for food and delight. A river flowed through the centre to water it. In the middle of the garden were two trees - the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were allowed to eat of any tree except this one, a command which they ignored, thus losing their innocence. As Joni Mitchell sang, we've 'got to get ourselves back to the garden'.

As those who prize knowledge it's easy for us to read the story as God trying to keep Adam and Eve in the dark. But if knowledge is experiential, their disobedience would mean they 'knew' evil for the first time on eating 'the apple', and that was not going to end well. All we can say is that in acting as though God's way were sub standard, they forfeited some sort of life which would have been untouched by death and decay, something we naturally find hard to imagine. The door was now open to someone hanging on another tree to win back life.

As Holy Week starts, we make preparations to look to that someone who hung on a tree for us, and to walk the way of the cross, in order to get back to the garden.

Sensing Lent 34: Cat

'Pippi' (Dutch)

I sometimes wish I were a cat. Sleep a lot, someone feeds you every day, nothing much to worry about. It's the nothing much to worry about which is so attractive. Recently I read a good philosophical account of why human consciousness means we do worry but we can also experience more happiness than animals, for the same reason. It is all to do with living in the present.

'For the animal to be happy it is enough that this moment be enjoyable. But man is hardly satisfied with this at all. He is much more concerned to have enjoyable memories and expectations - especially the latter. With these assured he can put up with an extremely miserable present. Without this assurance he can be extremely miserable in the midst of immediate physical pleasure' (Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity, 1951).

We do seem to be both burdened and blessed by a sense of the passing of time, which cats do not have. There are things in the future I worry about and things which I anticipate which fill me with pleasure. The present is the thing I struggle with. Perhaps that's why cats can seem to be so patient. In the event of a door being closed, or someone not yet being up in the morning, the cats in our house will sit looking at the door. As soon as it opens, they spring into action. But they don't appear bothered to hurry the moment. They'll look out the window for hours.

If I have managed by the end of Lent to be more present in the moment, perhaps by watching cats, I will have learnt something useful. 

Sensing Lent 33: Consider the lilies

Consider the lilies (or in this case, roses, tulips and orchids) - they 'neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these' Luke: 27). 

It's the ultimate 'do not worry' text from the New Testament and you can see why. When you're transfixed by the kind of beauty we saw today, growing naturally in the earth (or greenhouse) it's difficult to understand how it is we get hung up on so many things we think we can control. 

One thing about gazing on something naturally beautiful is that it keeps you in the present moment. It's very difficult to worry about anything when you're in the present, because worrying is about the past (things that you wish you could change, and can't) and the future (things you're afraid of but which might never happen).

'There can be no doubt that the power to remember and predict, to make an ordered sequence out of a helter skelter chaos of disconnected moments, is a wonderful achievement of sensitivity (...) but the way in which we generally use this power is apt to destroy all its advantages. For it is of little use to us to be able to be able to remember and predict if it makes us unable to live fully in the present' (The Wisdom of Insecurity, Alan W. Watts, 1951).

Consider the...roses, tulips, orchids...lilies... do not worry, look around, give thanks, stay in the present.

Sensing Lent 32: Beach

I don't think I've ever seen monks on a beach before. But why not? My thought processes, on spotting a pair today, were as follows: 'that's odd, the woman is wearing a long skirt and so is her partner; oh, they are both men; ah, they are monks.' It was like when Jesus sent out the disciples two by two - soon another couple of pairs came along. When they found themselves on the wrong side of a stream in the middle of the sand, it was a definite photo opportunity:

ee cummings describes four friends going to the beach and discovering a lot more than just the things they find on the sand: it's always haunted and fascinated me in equal measure:

maggie and molly and milly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star 
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

for whatever we lose(like a you and a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

So true, even without punctuation. Seagulls and monks in pairs, walking and talking and jumping.

Sensing Lent 31: The view from here

I've spent a lot of the day on European motorways. Lots of slow traffic but I was happy anyway - entirely because it's very different from what I normally get up to. A change is as good as a rest, they say, and I'm having both. It must be to do with perspective - everything expends and normal concerns are enveloped by something much bigger.

Post modern philosophy maintains that there's no view from nowhere; everyone has, literally a 'point of view' from which they see things, and no one can be neutral. This idea sits pretty comfortably with me but there are those for whom this has troubling implications for biblical interpretation. If there's no neutrality, do we all see a 'different truth' therein?

An interesting anecdote I heard was of a lady who went to a bible study on the book of Ruth. She was confidently told by the other members (all seasoned bible readers) that this book of the bible was about 'the Kinsman Redeemer'. This is true, objectively - Boaz, who married Ruth, was a 'type' of the Christ, who is human like us (kinsman) and our divine redeemer. But this lady was struggling with things at the time, struggling but pushing on through. She read Ruth and said 'I thought it was about a woman who overcame obstacles and eventually triumphed in her life.' Well, exactly.

We all have a view point. Even if it's from a traffic jam, it's bound to be illuminating.