To See Clearly

Excerpt from Devotional Classics

See­ing a New World

It was sun­ny one evening last sum­mer at Tin­ker Creek; the sun was low in the sky, upstream, I was sit­ting on the sycamore log bridge with the sun­set at my back, watch­ing the shin­ers the size of min­nows who were feed­ing over the mud­dy sand in skit­tery schools. Again and again, one fish, then anoth­er, turned for a split sec­ond across the cur­rent and flash! the sun shot out from its sil­ver side. I couldn’t watch for it. It was always just hap­pen­ing some­where else, and it drew my vision just as it dis­ap­peared: flash, like a sud­den daz­zle of the thinnest blade, a spark­ing over a dun and olive ground at chance inter­vals from every direc­tion. Then I noticed white specks, some sort of pale petals, small, float­ing from under my feet on the creek’s sur­face, very slow and steady.

So I blurred my eyes and gazed towards the brim of my hat and saw a new world. I saw the pale white cir­cles roll up, roll up, like the world’s turn­ing, mute and per­fect, and I saw the lin­ear flash­es, gleam­ing sil­ver, like stars being born at ran­dom down a rolling scroll of time. Some­thing broke and some­thing opened. I filled up like a new wine­skin. I breathed an air like light; I saw a light like water. I was the lip of a foun­tain the creek filled for­ev­er; I was ether, the leaf in the zephyr; I was flesh-flake, feath­er, bone.

The Realm of the Real

When I see this way I see tru­ly. As Thore­au says, I return to my sens­es. I am the man who watch­es the base­ball game in silence in an emp­ty sta­di­um. I see the game pure­ly; I’m abstract­ed and dazed. When it’s all over and the white-suit­ed play­ers lope off the green field to their shad­owed dugouts, I leap to my feet; I cheer and cheer.

But I can’t go out and try to see this way. I’ll fail, I’ll go mad. All I can do is try to gag the com­men­ta­tor, to hush the noise of the use­less inte­ri­or bab­ble that keeps me from see­ing just as sure­ly as a news­pa­per dan­gles before my eyes. The effort is real­ly a dis­ci­pline requir­ing a life­time of ded­i­cat­ed strug­gle; it marks the lit­er­a­ture of saints and monks of every order East and West, under every rule and no rule, dis­calced and shod.

The world’s spir­i­tu­al genius­es seem to dis­cov­er uni­ver­sal­ly that the mind’s mud­dy riv­er, this cease­less flow of triv­ia and trash can­not be dammed, and try­ing to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to mad­ness. Instead you must allow the mud­dy riv­er to flow unheed­ed in the dim chan­nels of con­scious­ness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mild­ly, acknowl­edg­ing its pres­ence with­out inter­est and gaz­ing beyond it into the realm of the real where sub­jects and objects act and rest pure­ly with­out utter­ance. ​“Launch into the deep,” says Jacques Ellul, ​“and you shall see.”

The Secret of Seeing

The secret of see­ing is, then, the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it for­ev­er I would stag­ger bare­foot across a hun­dred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The lit­er­a­ture of illu­mi­na­tion reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the most prac­ticed and adept, a gift and a total sur­prise. I return from one walk know­ing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek and the hour the lau­rel blooms. 

I return from the same walk a day lat­er scarce­ly know­ing my own name. Lita­nies hum in my ears; my tongue flaps in my mouth Aili­non, alleluia! I can­not cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam. It is pos­si­ble, in deep space, to sail on solar wind. Light, be it par­ti­cle or wave, has force: you rig a giant sail and go. The secret of see­ing is to sail on solar wind. Hone and spread your spir­it till you your­self are a sail, whet­ted, translu­cent, broad­side to the mer­est puff.

The tree with the lights in it

When her doc­tor took her ban­dages off and led her into the gar­den, the girl who was no longer blind saw ​“the tree with the lights in it.” It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of sum­mer, in the forests of fall and down win­ter and spring for years. Then one day, I was walk­ing along Tin­ker Creek think­ing of noth­ing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the back­yard cedar where the mourn­ing doves roost charged and trans­fig­ured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was whol­ly fire, utter­ly focused and utter­ly dreamed.

It was less like see­ing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breath­less by a pow­er­ful glance. The flood of fire abat­ed, but I’m still spend­ing the pow­er. Grad­u­al­ly the lights went out in the cedar, the col­ors died, the cells unflamed and dis­ap­peared. I was still ring­ing. I had been my whole life a bell, and nev­er knew it until at that moment I was lift­ed and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the moun­tains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the moun­tains slam.