Seeing Dimly....

It's been fourteen days since the emergency surgery to reattach my retina.  Last night I lay on my stomach to keep the bubble of gas inserted in my eyeball positioned correctly, and thus, keep the healing retina attached.  And I listened to a wonderful NPR interview with the past United States poet laureate, Ted Kooser. I've met Mr. Kooser and love his voice and his perspective on the Midwest values he treasures and honors with his poetry.  The interview included phone calls from listeners and one was especially poignant.

A German war bride wistfully asked if his experience growing up in the same location as previous family generations, knowing their homestead, fishing in the same river your ancestors had traveled when they looked for land- did those experiences make life richer? As she listened to his poetry, she said she was flooded with memories of her childhood in Germany. While she's immensely grateful for her life in America, she wondered.  Had she missed something?  She looked back at life... and saw dimly.

I'm looking at the present and seeing dimly- through a bubble of gas that floats and bobs a bit and obscures any clear vision.  Slowly I'm seeing more-all fuzzy but still, the shape of a hand, blocks of brilliant color as the sun floods a playroom, translucent plastic bath toys in a sunlight window. My body is already absorbing the bubble and will eventually be gone. My retina will again have a clear line of light from the pupil. Images will be clearer. I'll see as I don't see now.



All of us look back at our pasts, and forward toward our futures with obscured vision. We wonder, with our German/American friend- would my life have been richer if I had done...., will I have less regrets if I chose....?

Having my vision threatened has brought something I took for granted to prominence. For a few days the potential loss of my sight dominated my thoughts and emotions.  But in those quiet hours laying on my stomach, my thoughts are also of sight and vision in larger sense.  

What floats between me and a healthy vision of my life, past and future? 

Fears?  Expectations? Regrets? 

We can take for granted the current view of our reality but when that reality is threatened by 

chaos, calamity or contention, what is our response? 

Do we really see as clearly as we think we do? 

What if reality is obscured? 

Seen through a fog of unknowing? 

In the Bible, Paul said we see dimly, as through a mirror. The Amplified Bible has interesting wording of I Corinthians 13:12-

¹² For now we are looking in a mirror that gives only a dim (blurred) reflection [of reality as in a riddle or enigma], but then [when perfection comes] we shall see in reality and face to face! Now I know in part (imperfectly), but then I shall know and understand fully and clearly, even in the same manner as I have been fully and clearly known and understood [by God].

I'm looking forward to seeing more clearly again or at least not having a continual fog on the right side distracting me.  But I also want to keep thinking about a less obvious fog, a less visible barrier between me and a full life of trust and joy.  I want to look forward with faith to the time when I will fully understand how my past experiences and my future choices were all part of a beautiful mosaic. 

 I can only peer dimly, as through a mist, at the present.  

Lent from Frederich Buechner

I am still unable to write more than a few lines- each page is divided between blurry reading lines on the left and a complete fog on the right side.  It's been two weeks since the skill of a surgeon reattached my torn retina and I'm waiting for sight. 

An apt metaphor for Lent. Waiting....for sight.  

Meanwhile, one much smarter than I asks us to look closely inside this season.

February 18, 2015
Lent
Special Quote for Ash Wednesday
In many cultures there is an ancient custom of giving a tenth of each year's income to some holy use. For Christians, to observe the forty days of Lent is to do the same thing with roughly a tenth of each year's days. After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus. During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another what it means to be themselves. If you had to bet everything you have on whether there is a God or whether there isn't, which side would get your money and why? When you look at your face in the mirror, what do you see in it that you most like and what do you see in it that you most deplore? If you had only one last message to leave to the handful of people who are most important to you, what would it be in twenty-five words or less? Of all the things you have done in your life, which is the one you would most like to undo? Which is the one that makes you happiest to remember? Is there any person in the world, or any cause, that, if circumstances called for it, you would be willing to die for? If this were the last day of your life, what would you do with it? To hear yourself try to answer questions like these is to begin to hear something not only of who you are but of both what you are becoming and what you are failing to become. It can be a pretty depressing business all in all, but if sack-cloth and ashes are at the start of it, something like Easter may be at the end. - Originally published in Wishful Thinking http://www.frederickbuechner.com/