Northern Lights

 

Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold.

Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina


Last night brilliant splashes of green and red waved gently in the black night sky like curtains in a breeze. They say the northern lights were visible all the way down into the southern United States. I find this ironic since I am visiting Anchorage Alaska where people see the Aurora Borealis frequently. I missed it. I am choosing to believe the show was hidden by cloud cover here, because I would rather not believe that I missed seeing something spectacular only because I was snuggled deep under the covers.

Life is like that. I am often oblivious to cosmic dances of joy. Oblivious because I can't see past my local clouds. I miss them because my eyes are shut or because I don't want to leave the comfort of my warm blankets.

Beautiful realities fill the sky whether my eyes are open to them or not.

A man who moved here a couple of years ago told us about an experience on a boardwalk near town that winds through reedy marshes near Cook Inlet. He was there, walking his dogs, and came across an energized knot of people peering through cameras with giant lenses attached. "What are you seeing?" Ian asked. "Birds! Don't you see them? There, and there, and there!" He didn't see. Veteran bird watchers did.

When the blind man cried out to Jesus, Jesus stopped. He asked "What do you want me to do for you?" (Mark 10:46 - 52)

He cried out, and I cry out too, "Rabbi, I want to see!"

Those Who See

As adults, we lose our eyesight.  

I don't mean the kind that can be corrected by a visit to the eye doctor; I am talking about a more important kind of vision.  

One of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, talks about seeing the world sacramentally, "to see everything as an outward and visible sign of inward, invisible grace. "

Some children are masters at this.  I remember years ago taking a walk with Courtney.  She was in third grade; her parents were divorcing, and I wanted to give her a little moral support.  We were walking along together and she suddenly stopped.  "Look at that flower!"  She forgot everything except the beauty before her.  I looked but couldn't see anything that could possibly have inspired awe.  She had to point to the flower right next to her before I could see it.  It wasn't too small for my eyes.  It was huge.  I couldn't see it, because it was a weed, an enormous thorny thistle in full bloom.  Patiently she taught me to see.  "It is soooo purple!  And soft!  Look, put your finger here.  Doesn't it feel like velvet?" 

Hating the nuisance and thorns of the thistle robbed me of my ability to be present and in awe of the color of the downy purple bloom.   

Seeing was a source of Emily Dickinson's genius too.  In the poem that inspired the name of this blog she says, 

Earth's crammed with Heaven and every common bush afire,

but only those who see take off their shoes...

I want to walk around my whole life with my eyes open and my shoes off, even when I walk among thistles.