The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding the capacities which the outside didn’t indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn’t detect. –Mark Twain
He burst through the front door, charged up the steps, skidded to a halt and said, “Grandma, you got a new candle!” My grandson, Griffin, has truly uncommon eyes. For an eight-year-old boy, he doesn’t miss a thing–including a new Yankee candle on a side table in the corner. He and his sister have always had these eyes, eyes like heat-seeking missiles that lock onto their targets. Their targets may be small and ordinary, the very things that just don’t show up on others’ radars. They may be objects, or, more importantly, they may be the nearly imperceptible looks that cross one’s face and give brief, yet valuable, insights in the heart and soul. In a world of common eyes, Griffin and Gracyn have truly uncommon ones; they have seeing eyes that Mark Twain describes as those that pierce through and read the heart and soul.
Undoubtedly, they’ve inherited them from their mother, and, I’d like to think, from me. When their mother was a girl, she once stopped me as I was weeding the garden to ask if I was alright. I can still recall how her concern momentarily took me aback. What could have led her to believe I might not be o.k.? Busily weeding, I was flinging dandelions over my shoulder into a pile on the sidewalk. What could she possibly have seen? When I pressed her, she said, I saw your eyes doing funny things, like they were pressed together. And then I understood that she’d misinterpreted my squinting for trouble. After I’d explained that I was just squinting because I’d left my sunglasses in the car, she gave me a serious once-over to confirm that I was truly o.k. before returning to her sisters.
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how and what we see. I don’t think it comes as any surprise that most of the seeing we do is with common eyes that skim and scan. We beg forgiveness as we offer up all sorts of excuses for not really seeing something or someone: too busy; too difficult; too labor-intensive. In a world in which many of us struggle to see where we’ve left our phones or car keys, it may seem an overreach to expect us to have seeing eyes.
In the late 19th century, English archeologist, banker, and philanthropist, John Lubbock wrote:
What we do see depends mainly on what we look for…. In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the coloring, sportsmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.
Most of us are probably familiar with Lubbock’s claim that even when we’re all looking at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them in the same way. But perhaps we’re not as familiar with his claim that what we look for determines how and what we actually see. Here’s the rub: what we look for matters and matters deeply. Today, many argue that our nation is divided and divisive. In this climate, then, what are we looking for? Are we looking to see in others what we already believe, what will confirm the biases we hold and sharply define the lines we’ve drawn? Do our eyes, then, brush over the surfaces of others, confident that we’ve seen all we need to see? And do we count the costs of living with common eyes?
Years ago, my son, Quinn, was recruited by a Division II football program but became wholly invisible the moment he reported to camp his freshman year. For months, the head coach had wooed him. And for the previous two summers, he’d proven his talent and work ethic at this university’s summer camps where he earned the title of Most Valuable Player. He’d optimistically moved 400 miles away from home to pursue his dream of playing collegiate football. What prompted this coach to unsee what he’d previously seen? I can only guess that he was no longer looking for what he once had. Once visible, Quinn had become invisible. To make the team, neither talent nor work ethic mattered if no one would see him. After Quinn graduated and accepted his first teaching and coaching position, I reminded him of the lessons he’d learned from his athletic career and said: If you ever fail to see–I mean really see–your students and players, you’ll have to answer to me. I wasn’t messing around. I’d seen the painful fallout that occurrs when teachers and coaches aren’t willing to see. More than anything, I didn’t want my son to join their ranks; I wanted him to have seeing eyes.
Throughout the New Testament, Jesus speaks repeatedly about seeing and failing to see. In Luke 11:34, he instructs his disciples and the crowds that had gathered to hear him:
The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.
Many of us have unhealthy eyes, and we desperately need eye exams to diagnose our maladies. Too often, we don’t see, and, sadly, we don’t want to see. Clearly, Jesus understood that only healthy, seeing eyes make for a healthy souls, and healthy souls are uncommonly compassionate. I’m afraid we’re all too content to look through the glass darkly, for if we clean the glass through which we look out upon our world, we might occasionally glimpse the hearts and souls of those we’ve been quick to dismiss. And then what? How would we proceed after we’d read their inner thoughts and feelings? In the end, would we choose to see or unsee?
Theologian and writer C. S. Lewis explains that [w]hat you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are. Could it be that we frequently stand too far away to see anything other than surfaces, our eyes conditioned to scan simple forms? And when it comes to how we see others, could it be that we’re hesistant–if not unwilling–to first consider the sort of people we truly are? That is, are we willing and able to see the logs in our own eyes before we search out the specks in others’?
I value the great gift that seeing eyes have given my children and grandchildren. As well as the gift they’ve given the rest of us who are–and will continue to be–touched by their sight. With children, it starts small: a coin-shaped rock in a driveway, a tear that pools in the corner of a mother’s eye, a lap that holds a pair of trembling hands. But small is good. Small is necessary when it comes to seeing eyes. For eyes trained on the small stuff will be far more likely to see the big stuff, far more likely to be full of light in a world too frequently full of darkness.
