Soul Seeing

It was barely midday, and I was already exhausted. We had set up this makeshift feeding center in Ethiopia for victims of a devastating famine, and they now blanketed the room. Women cradling emaciated children pressed against one another, as each claimed a coveted piece of that hard mud floor.

When I was in the seminary, an elderly priest told us, “Life is a series of Good Fridays with an occasional Easter thrown in just to keep us going.”

We were young. “No!” we objected. “Life is an endless Easter with some Good Fridays thrown in to keep us on our toes!”

It wasn’t until I was his age that I realized both sides are true.

On Christmas Eve, I attended with Maria, my wife, the American Ballet Theatre’s presentation of “The Nutcracker” in New York. Ballet is not high on my list of entertainments, but on this occasion I was profoundly moved. What inspired me was not just the work of art, but the way I found myself present to it, taking it in, living in it. I wondered at whatever is at work in the universe, hurtling atoms billions of years ago into the life and death of countless stars, through transformation after transformation into Tchaikovsky, such astonishing music, into the beauty and grace of the dancers, and in me reflecting on how this all happens.

Soul seeing reminds me of a visit to the eye doctor. She tries various lenses with different degrees of fuzziness until one finally reaches clarity. “That’s it!” we say in delight. Suddenly, we can see. If we look through the right spiritual lens, we may also recognize times of prayer where we hadn’t noticed them before. Some prayerful moments are as dramatic as bounding across a stage, others as humble as laundry. The common denominator is the spirit of the Creator stirring within us and our response to that voice.

I saw him from a block away. He perched precariously in a motorized chair, his body slight like a child’s, hardly weighing 50 pounds in his maturity. I counted three serpentine bends in the arm that reached out to guide his odyssey, and my heart sank at the writhing distress that was this man’s whole existence. His limbs twisted like a contortionist’s. Even his face was beyond his control, gripped by grimaces many times a minute.

A few years ago I hiked the White Mountains of New Hampshire with my family. What I had not shared with anyone was that for weeks I had been suffering from an ingrown toenail in my big toe. After a couple of hours my toe was throbbing. I could hardly walk and was slowing down the group. The children were getting frustrated. Finally, my brother stopped and said, “Sit on that rock and give me your boot.”