"to see you holy, holy, holy..."

"Open the eyes of my heart, Lord
Open the eyes of my heart.
I want to see you,
I want to see you  -
holy, holy, holy..."

Last week's Bible study was rife with reminders that it's all about seeing what is right in front of you through different eyes.  I haven't been able to move on from those scriptural messages this week.  I've woken with the Women of Faith's version of Paul Baloche's "Open the Eyes of My Heart" singing through my veins this week.  I wanted to think about it more, but each day seemed to make its demands on my thoughts before I could find the time to really ponder it.

But this morning,  I lingered in the space of stillness -- that conscious vestibule between sleeping and waking where I am only aware of my thoughts, not the sentience of seeing the room around me, hearing the birds outside our windows, or feeling the quilts and linens around me - and stayed with last week's messages about "seeing" for as long as I could.  This space of conscious being is my favorite place to "abide," and it was in this mental room that I finally saw the relationship between the story of Elisha and his servant facing the army of the King of Syria, and Jesus' parable of the householder who finds his field is sown with wheat and tares. 

For the first time I noticed the contrast between the worrisome King of Syria's suspicion that someone in his own household had betrayed his location to the King of Israel, and the peaceful householder in Jesus' parable who never once accuses a member of his own household, but immediately states, "an enemy hath done it" and confidently trusts the power of Spirit, the breath of God, to separate the tares from the wheat...much the way the prophet Elisha, in the former story, was sure that his servant would be able to see an army of angels "round about Elisha,"  if his eyes were just opened to God's universal goodness. 

Right where the servant's fear saw a host of enemies, the eyes of the prophet's heart, the lens of Love, revealed only a host of angels.   An enemy becomes a friend through the eyes of Love.  Love never sees anything but the child of God.   There weren't two different armies -- but the transformation of an enemy fitted for battle, into a host of angels ready to bless and protect.   The tares of fear, hatred, suspicion, and distrust blew away in the strong breath of spiritual vision.

As I was pondering this, I realized how true it is that we never need to sort our global "neighbors" (or household) into friends and enemies, but to change our sense of them into only "children of God" or, as the prophet promised,  "a host of angels round about" us.

Whether we seem to be a facing a border dispute with a contentious neighbor, battling with memories of a time when we were in conflict with a family member, burdened by fears that a future event could devolve into hurt and regret, or hear about a gunman terrorizing a Texas university campus, through prayer, we can always "open the eyes of our hearts" to the freshening breath of Spirit, see "even this" through the lens of a loving prophet vision, and begin to diffuse fear, hatred and anger with the gentling hand of Soul. 

Today, as I was looking for a favorite passage from Steven Pressfield's "The War of Art," I accidentally googled the title backwards, and up popped a reference to Napolean Bonaparte's "The Art of War," highlighting this quote:

"The extent of your consciousness
is limited only by your ability to love
and to embrace with your love
the space around you, and all it contains"

I was stunned.  This was not the kind of thinking I'd associated with a man I had always considered a pint-sized dictator with a hungry, mad ambition to rule Europe, and a relentless drive to push his army across a frozen continent towards their doom. 

Suddenly I wanted to know more.  I was interested in knowing him, in understanding more about a man I'd long dismissed out of hand as not very admirable.  What a wake up call. 

All day I've been asking myself, "how have I been seeing my "neighbors" -- globally and locally? As enemies, when I could just as easily  "open the eyes of my heart" and see them as friends who may have some arrestingly beautiful thoughts to share, and viewpoints that could enrich my life with vision and inspiration.

Again, Mary Baker Eddy's statement from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures reminds me:

"The very circumstance which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares.  Then, thought gently whispers..."

I love it when Mind, expressing itself as consciousness, surprises me with a gift of grace...

thank you God,
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"All around me are familiar faces..."

"All around me are familiar faces,
Worn out places, Worn out faces,
Bright and early for the daily races,
Going nowhere, Going nowhere,
Their tears are filling up their glasses,
No expression, No expression,
Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow,
No tomorrow, No tomorrow,
And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad,
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had,
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take,
When people run in circles it's a very very,
Mad world, Mad world…"
- "Mad World"

I remember the first time I saw Los Angeles….or at least the hazy, gray megalopolis I thought was Los Angeles.  I had been driving cross-country for over a week.  Suddenly the empty desert of southeastern California gave way and in the distance...creeping closer with every mile...were the edges of what I thought was the City of Angels. A city I imagined to be the size of Philadelphia.  I assumed with that level of population density so soon, I must be near the city's epicenter.  I was wrong.  It would take me over two hours to reach the inner belt of urban Los Angeles and every mile felt like I was falling deeper and deeper into a looming grey hole.  I knew exactly one, count her…one, person in all of Southern California and she would be leaving soon after I arrived to begin my time house-sitting for she and her husband.

I was terrified.  Prior to this experience, my "city" had been New York City. Brownstones, brick cobbles, Washington Square and "the Village" were easy to navigate on a summer's evening...but this place was the color of asphalt and cement, concrete and steel...and for some reason it made me feel frantic and helpless...more alone than I had ever felt before. And because I was terrified, terror was all that I could see on the faces of men, women, and children I passed on street corners and observed at bus stops.   It took me weeks to discover that the hopelessness I was observing was really just a mental film over my own eyes coloring everything with a dull, gray, sad tone of despair.

I spent many lonely weeks in this gray mental fog until one afternoon when I was sitting on a concrete bench near the corner of Wilshire and Western. There I saw a young Korean mother and her toddler daughter waiting for the bus.  My first thought was, "I wonder where you would go if you could afford to get out of this place?"

But then the little girl turned to me and shot a 3 million megawatt smile in my direction.  It was like a strong gust of wind blowing the gray/hopelessness glasses off of my face and suddenly the world was suffused with color and charm.  I scootched over on the bench to where her mother was watching her daughter…obviously as smitten as I was…and cleared my voice.  She turned briefly in my direction before re-fixing her gaze on the little girl not ten inches from her side.  "Hello," I said. "Oh, hello," she replied.   "Do you live near here?" I asked.  "Oh no," she laughed shyly, "if only we could…"  Her palpable longing to live in this inner city neighborhood where dumpsters and concrete made up the "landscape" surprised me. 

She went on to explain that she, her husband and four children had only just come to America from Korea and were living with relatives in another town two hours away by bus.  Both she and her husband worked in the downtown neighborhood where we were sitting, but on separate shifts so that someone would be home for the children after school.  She brought Lea to work at the dry cleaners each day since her husband's bus left for downtown before her bus arrived home.  Lea, she explained was too much for her elderly mother to care for…in addition to the other three children…during the in between time.

"This is where I have dreamed of living since I was a little girl in Korea," she sighed. 

She told me, in halting English, that her dreams were coming true everytime she and Lea rode the bus to the corner of Wilshire and Western.  She then pointed to a bank of second story windows above a strip of shops where a Korean restaurant, dry cleaners, market, and insurance office stood.  "Someday we will live in an apartment above our own shop," she dreamed aloud.   The joy she exhaled seemed to be enough to drive my own hopelessness into exile.

Right at that moment I was sitting in someone's "dream come true".  The world of urban concrete and international commerce…filled with hand-lettered signs in languages I had never even heard spoken before…made sense to me through her eyes.  This was a place to come to…not a place where everyone was eager to leave…as I had imagined.

I looked around me and could find people who were smiling, purposeful, and at peace, whereas a mere hour before I saw only gray, resolute drones going from here to there and back again with robot-like mindlessness.  I saw what I felt.

There is a story in the Bible from the second chapter of Kings where the prophet Elisha and his servant are on the run from the Syrians and were finally trapped, surrounded in the city of Dothan by the enemy army.  Elisha's servant is "sore afraid" when he sees that they are compassed about by horses and chariots and a "great host". 

Elisha first assures his servant, "Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them."

Then he prays.  And his prayer, surprisingly, is not for deliverance. He doesn't hope for, or even ask God to show him a way of escaping Dothan or how to circumvent the army of Syria.

His prayer is "Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see."

And the story continues:  "And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."

What only moments before had looked like an untenable situation that foretold sure doom, with "opened eyes" became not only a safe situation, but one where Elisha and his servant were "cared for, watched over, beloved and protected". 

That day I felt like Lea and her mother "opened my eyes" and everything gray and hopeless became full of color, beauty, opportunity and awakening.  

Later that week I decided that if I was going to be living in a big city with international neighbors, I would make it a time of discovery.  I started exploring international film, cooking, religions, and music.  Any given Saturday I could be found holed up in a Japanese cinema reading English subtitles under a classic Akira Kirowsawa film or visiting an Ethiopian restaurant for conversation, injira, and wat with a group of Rastafarians.  I spent a few too many Tuesday nights at a Salsa Club downtown and, sadly, not as many Friday evenings sharing Shabbat dinner with a fellow teacher from school.

My Los Angeles chapter was filled with color, music, exploration, adventure...and yes, some mistakes that I learned a great deal from.  A mother's dreams at a bus stop mid-city had opened my eyes to all that I was suddenly surrounded by.  Not horses and chariots of fire, but even better, the wonders of being a global citizen in an international city. And as an invested and engaged member of the human family, there were no longer any foreign faces... all faces became "familiar faces"... 

"…Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday
Made to feel the way that every child should
Sit and listen, sit and listen…"

I'm still listening,
Kate