Honing My Peripheral Vision

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor in The Preaching Life writes, “I must also be willing to look between things and not always at them, since a direct gaze often misses what may be glimpsed at the corner of the eye.  The space between two branches may become more promising than the branches themselves.”  I need to work on my peripheral vision, trying from the corner of my eye to see what is in between, rather than simply focusing on what I see directly in front of me. As Taylor suggests, there is a space between two branches which may be more important than the branches themselves.  

What a difference it would make if we could see not just a person’s face, the color of his or her skin and only hear the words he or she may speak, or the clothes they may wear, but rather the “spaces” in between all that physical stuff?  Rather than just looking directly at Joe, perhaps I could see beyond Joe’s physical characteristics and comprehend the space between—all that  really makes Joe, Joe.  Perhaps, with a newly honed peripheral vision, I could see “that of God” in Joe and "that of God" in the space between Joe and me. 

Harold Bell Wright in his book, The Uncrowned King, writes:

Eyes blinded by the fog of things cannot see truth.

Ears deafened by the din of things cannot hear truth.

Brains bewildered by the whirl of things cannot think truth.

Hearts deadened by the weight of things cannot feel truth.

Throats choked by the dust of things cannot speak truth.

The story of Jesus and the blind man of Bethsaida is found in Mark 8:24.  After spitting on the blind man’s eyes and touching them, Jesus asked him, “Do you see anything?”  The man answered, “I see people but they look like trees walking around.”  It took a second touch to make the man “see everything clearly.”  A second touch is often necessary to help us see the space in between—from seeing people as being trees walking around, to seeing “everything clearly.”