Another Way of Seeing

Another Way of Seeing
Trinity Sunday
I slip my glasses off and free my eyes
to sense the stirring touch of wind and sun.
These lenses can’t expand what this mind sees
when all I look at is the ground ahead.
I walk the dog through landscape widely spread,
but peer instead at ruts and heavy ground
where circling thoughts are plodding unaware.

I slip my glasses off and lift my eyes:
my gaze turns outward to a world grown blurred,
the edges softened and the shapes more strange.
Expected outlines shift before my eyes.
Here certainties dissolve and sight is drawn
to blends of colour and the wash of light. 

The world is made like this with layered veils,
and stories patched like quilts, ambiguous 
to naked eyes, and yet perhaps the lens 
we look through tames awareness to plain sight.
We miss the warp of chaos, interlaced
in patterns underpinned and edged with grace.

See how the Spirit broods upon the waters,
bringing form from chaos, and the Word
says: “Let there be” and so there is, and three
in one Creator God will see and show
that it is good. So in this image made, 
we co-create. Let water and the word 
inform our mind and sight. Let dust take shape!
Let words and spit and tears be mixed like mud,
while wind we cannot see, but gladly sense 
will mould the clay and challenge it to be,
and wake our eyes to life with healing touch.

Then I’ll see trees, like people, move in time
to music still beyond the reach of ears.
Speak to the dust of which my flesh is made.
With word and touch make something more than clay.
Let reshaped ears discern beyond what’s heard,
and vision take in more of depth and height,
the sight revealed by wisdom and the light.
Barbara Messner c 2012