Seeing Is Believing

Seeing Is Believing. Me thinks this just about wraps up our modern way of life and raison d'etre. We have become entirely visual, including sound on our internet lifestyle. Video records everything we do. Reality shows bring the banal into our living rooms as entertainment. If it's not in the headline news, we cease to be concerned by what we have seen. Designer labels are bigger, more visible, because it says something about our person. Food looks better than it tastes (in Holland this is not a subjective statement!). We even want to see satellite radar weather on the computer before we see it and feel it outdoors. In fact, seeing something virtually seems to have reduced the need for touch and smell.

And yet Christ asks us to see in another way. 'Not with our eyes, but with our hearts', states the priest at mass today. Is Love about seeing wonders and miracles? If we see that which we can't believe (a miracle), will seeing it make it believable? Does seeing anything transform us? Or does it just open the way for more doubt and a greater need for the tangible and visible here on Earth.

As the Buddha suggested, nothing we can know from our senses can be seen as absolute Truth. We see a blue sky. From space, there is no sky. How does a blind man know there is a blue sky? What is the reality of the sky if it can be seen and experienced in so many ways? All our senses are so very real for us, yet ultimately they are temporary and ephemeral: what we see today, we saw differently when we were younger (we saw the world differently then) and when our eyes dim with age we will again see differently. If we believe as we see, then our belief will be just as changeable and ephemeral.

Yet if we 'see' with our heart, with our faith, we have something upon which we can build, regardless of the changeability of our senses. Faith is a gift and our practise nurtures it. If we know through our own experience of trust and diligent practise that Love works miracles in our own lives, then we do not need eyes to see it. Peace is an experience that can be know without seeing it to be believed. Which part of our mind demands to see something before it can be accepted? Jesus invites us to listen and have faith that he will leave and return, stronger than ever as the Spirit of Truth. Why can't we trust? Why can't be believe? What is holding us back and demanding a sign, something tangible (of this Earth), something to see?

Are you waiting to see the answer?

Deo gratias.

On Love

Love. Brotherly love, unconditional, loving-kindness, not lustful, not self-centered, as God is and the Son revealed in his suffering, death and resurrection and the love we can aspire to through the Holy Ghost, St. John's message is clear. After reading today's Gospel at mass, the priest said that he was slightly disappointed each year that after hearing how simple a true life is, namely a life lived in love, that not a single person jumped up with a cry of joy, "I get it!". True compassion, loving-kindness without Self motivations, metta in Buddhism, is not something merely to be understood. It must be done. Practiced. It must be at the forefront of ones every thought and action, lived, breathed and so made One. Despite our cultural conditioning, we must turn the other cheek and forgive, as we are taught by Christ. Impossible! Crazy! Yes, and they will attack and humiliate you, they will try to hold you down, prove that it cannot be real, just as Jesus warned. But, just as God is love, so we too are love, created in his image. Release the undesirable baggage of hate and suspicion. Love is the Prodigal Son welcomed home. Be love. Only then can we know freedom and joy. Only then can we see God. Only then can we truly be alive. "All you need is love", sing the Beatles. Lord, let me be blind, deaf and dumb to the temporal world that I may be born anew, freed from fear so that I may love. May all that I do, all I am, be a prayer of thanks to Love for all to witness, an inspiration for all to relax, slow down, take some time before acting thoughtlessly, and become that which we are, I am, One in Love. Deo gracias.