Slower Vision

I spent 8 wonderful days in Bermuda last month, and many of those days were spent basking on pink sand beaches and snorkeling in aqua marine, clear waters. It is amazing what you can see. It is amazing what you can miss seeing.

Having been snorkeling a few times, I settled in over a small reef and relaxed, waiting for the marine life to give its show of color, movement and characters beneath me. Suddenly, the waters were disturbed by a family of four swimming steadily by, chatting loudly as their mask-clad faces bobbed in and out of the water, splashing forward as if they had some hurried agenda to accomplish. The fish below me darted away in reaction to the sound and movement of the churning water. The family passed and I heard one of them ask, “Do you see anything?”

As the water returned to its own rhythm, so did the fish. I watched their dance and the beauty of the ever-changing sea for some time. It is an unparalleled wonder to behold.

Sometimes we have to slow down, even stop and wait until our eyes focus on the life moving around us. No matter if it is an Atlantic sea view, the back yard, or the movement of our family, we have to be careful or there is much we can miss.

Sacramental Sacred Things

Life is sacred. I have known this for most of the years I have spent walking this earth. I know now that life is more sacred, more precarious than I once believed. I suspect that life is even more so than I can comprehend.

Years ago, I wandered through Ursula Le Guin's "Earth Sea" trilogy. I found some wonderful images and stories there. It is a wonderful tale about coming of age and finding one's spiritual framework in the world. At one moment in the tale, a young wizard is anxious to learn 'real' magic. Tired of the lessons in illusions where he repeats incantations to make objects appear to be something other than themselves, he inquires as to when he will be taught how to really change something into something else. The answer he receives is basically this:

To make something, a stone for example, appear to be something else, a piece of bread, perhaps, is of no great consequence other than the momentary deception to presents. However, to permanently transform a stone into a piece of bread changes the balance, for there is now not only one more piece of bread in the world, but one less stone.

Life is interconnected and if we are lucky we get glimpses of this connectedness. The apparent divisions that divide one thing from another are only perception and I believe, in fact an illusion of sorts in and of themselves. At their best, the sacraments of religious systems can move our experience and perspective to a new and more complete state. We are changed. I cannot attest to a manner of existence that might be centered in such a shift, but only to moments when I have glimpsed the reality of the full sacredness of life. Has it been said, "there is no you and them, this or that, only us, only one?" Such an awareness can send us into overload, or perhaps even disbelief.

Too many words here.