What do you see?

Looking for a smaller book to carry backpacking a few weeks ago, I began rereading Annie Dillard's book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. (As it happened, that week Dillard died, a curious coincidence.) Published in 1974, the book chronicles a season Dillard spent living in a cabin in Virginia, and her intense awareness of the natural world around her. She talks about seeing in ways that I rarely see - sitting motionless for hours watching the bottom of the creek, staring at nearly microscopic algae in a puddle of water, looking intently at sunlight through the leaves of a tree. What she sees is both beautiful and terrible, and she describes it all unflinchingly. 

Rereading the book has made me think again about seeing, and how often we fail to see. There are studies of how our attention works that show how when we are preoccupied with a problem, we literally fail to see objects in front of us - our brains can't do both. And that applies more broadly as well: when I'm busy, when I'm worried, when I'm thinking about other things, I don't notice as well. Or I notice them through a lens of my own impatience or stress, not seeing people or places as they truly are. I don't like that -- it's what leads me to be irritated or dismissive of other people, and to miss the beauty of the land as I rush by. I think this is a problem for many of us in our time -- part of what cuts us off from true connection with one another and with the world around us.

One of our prayers asks God to 'open our eyes to see your hand at work in the world around us.' I'm praying that anew after reading Tinker Creek. Perhaps we can make that one of our disciplines this year at St. Francis: to see each other and to see our surrounding community more clearly, and to see God at work.