awareness

I think we all suffer from acute blindness at times. Life is a constant journey of trying to open your eyes. I’m just beginning my journey, and my eyes aren’t fully open yet. — Olivia Thirlby Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind … — William Shakespeare I have looked into your eyes with my eyes. I have put my heart near your heart. — Pope John XXIII

Songs about ‘Blindness’: Blind Leading the Blind by Mumford & Sons (rock) Blind Fools by Megan Davies & Curtis Peoples (country) I Am Free by Newsboys (Christian rock) I Go Blind by Hootie & The Blowfish (rock) I Wish I Were Blind by Bruce Springsteen (rock) Seeing Blind by Niall Horan & Maren Morris (country) Sky Blue by Peter Gabriel with Blind Boys of Alabama (ballad/gospel) Blind Boy by Musical Youth (pop) Loving Blind by Clint Smith (country) Love Is Blind by David Coverdale/Whitesnake (rock) Lord You’ve Been Good To Me by 5 Blind Boys (gospel) He Saw It All by the Booth Brothers (Christian country) If You Me To by Ginny Owens (Christian) Live Music with Blind Boys of Alabama (gospel) Blind Man by Aerosmith (rock) Blind Love by Tom Waits (country) You’re Blind by Run/DMC (rock/rap) Blind by Dababy (rap – includes explicit lyrics/some cursing) Songs about Sight & Seeing: My Father’s Eyes by Eric Clapton (rock) Have You Ever Seen the Rain? by Creedance Clearwater Revival (country/rock) Doctor My Eyes by Jackson Browne (rock) Look at Me by Sarah Vaughan (jazz/blues) I Only Have Eyes for You by The Flamingos (rock/soul) The Light In Your Eyes by LeAnn Rimes (country) When I Look at the World by U2 I Look to You by Whitney Houston (rock) The Way You Look Tonight by Frank Sinatra (jazz/big band) Eyes Open by Taylor Swift (pop) Close Your Eyes by Meghan Trainor (country) Fresh Eyes by Andy Grammer (pop) In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel (rock ballad) Don’t Close Your Eyes cover by Tim McGraw In Another’s Eyes by Trisha Yearwood & Garth Brooks (country) In My Daughter’s Eyes by Martina McBride Sue Looks Good to Me by Alicia Keys (pop) Look It Here by Public Enemy (rap) Look Me In the Heart by Tina Turner (rock) Look at Me Now by Kirk Franklin (rock/rap/gospel) Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You by Frankie Valli (rock) Close Your Eyes by Peaches & Herb & again Close Your Eyes The Five Keys (soul/rock) Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler (rock ballad) When I Look in Your Eyes by Firehouse (rock) Close Your Eyes by Michael Buble (pop) Close My Eyes Forever by Ozzy Osbourne & Lita Ford (rock ballad) Take a Look at Me Now (Against All Odds) by Phil Collins (pop ballad) Angel Eyes by the Jeff Healey Band (rock) My Eyes Have Seen You and I Looked at You by The Doors (rock) Sight for Sore Eyes by Aerosmith (rock) Look at Me Now by Charlies Puth (pop) Ocean Eyes by Billie Eilish The Way I Am by Ingrid Michaelson (pop ballad) The Eyes of a Woman by Journey (rock) PRAYER by Richard Rohr God of all Light and Truth, just make sure that I am not a blind man or woman. Keep me humble and honest, and that will be more than enough work for you. PRAYER by Nadia Bolz-Weber God of desert prophets and unlikely messiahs, humble us. Show us that there is more to see than what we look for. More possibility. More love. More forgiveness … Restore our sight so that we may see you in each other. PRAYER by St Augustine Late have I loved you, O beauty ever ancient, ever new. Late have I loved you. You have called to me, and have called out, and have shattered my deafness. You have blazed forth with light and have put my blindness to flight! You have sent forth fragrance, and I have drawn in my breath, and I pant after you. I have tasted you, and I hunger and thirst after you. You have touched me, and I have burned for your peace. At the End of the Day: A Mirror of Questions — John O’Donohue What dreams did I create last night? Where did my eyes linger today? Where was I blind? Where was I hurt without anyone noticing? What did I learn today? What did I read? What new thoughts visited me? What differences did I notice in those closest to me? Whom did I neglect? Where did I neglect myself? What did I begin today that might endure? How were my conversations? What did I do today for the poor and the excluded? Did I remember the dead today? When could I have exposed myself to the risk of something different? Where did I allow myself to receive love? With whom today did I feel most myself? What reached me today? How did it imprint? Who saw me today? What visitations hd I from the past and from the future? What did I avoid today? From the evidence – why was I given this day?

RICHARD ROHR COMMENTARY   (from Center for Action & Contemplation)
Finally, the great theater-piece Gospel is about a man born blind. … We can only touch upon the surface here, but enough to point you beneath the surface, I hope. Let me list in quick succession the major themes so you cannot miss them: 

• The “man born blind” is the archetype for all of us at the beginning of life’s journey.
• The moral blame game as to why or who caused human suffering is a waste of time.
• The man does not even ask to be healed. It is just offered and given.
• Religious authorities are often more concerned about control and correct theology than actually healing people. They are presented as narrow and unloving people throughout the story.
• Many people have their spiritual conclusions before the facts in front of them. He is a predefined “sinner” and has no credibility for them.
• Belief in and love of Jesus come after the fact, subsequent to the healing. Perfect faith or motivation is not always a prerequisite for God’s action. Sometimes God does things for God’s own purposes.
• Spirituality is about seeing. Sin is about blindness, or as Saint Gregory of Nyssa will say, “Sin is always a refusal to grow.”
• The one who knows little, learns much (what we call “beginner’s mind”) and those who have all their answers already, learn nothing.

Doing as others told me, I was Blind.
Coming when others called me, I was Lost.
Then I left everyone, myself as well.
Then I found Everyone, Myself as well.
― Rumi

COMMENTARY on the STORY of the BLIND MAN

… Of the two choices, Jesus picked a third, unbinding sin from the body, deformity from purity.  Before sight was restored, God’s presence was invoked in this marginal space, this “inappropriate” body.  God’s presence was invoked within the blind man – within the “imperfect”, within the “other”.  And when his eyes were opened, God’s light came pouring out from this man, casting into stark relief the social and religious ideas that had kept him out for so long. — Eliza (UCC minister – see full posting on her blog)

Jesus doesn’t ask the blind guy when he heals him what he’ll be looking at for the rest of his life. — Anne Lamott

It will make a weak man mighty. it will make a mighty man fall. It will fill your heart and hands or leave you with nothing at all. It’s the eyes for the blind and legs for the lame. It is the love for hate and pride for shame. That’s the power of the gospel. — Ben Harper

It was here in the midst of my own community of underside dwellers that I couldn’t help but begin to see the Gospel, the life-changing reality that God is not far off, but here among the brokenness of our lives. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

ON SEEING & BLINDNESS as STATES of SPIRITUAL PERCEPTION

It’s not like ‘I once was blind, and now can see’: it’s more like, ‘I once was blind and now I have really bad vision’. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Optimism does not mean being blind to the actual reality of a situation. It means maintaining a positive spirit to continue to seek a solution to any given problem. And it means recognizing that any given situation has many different aspects—positive as well as problematic. — Dalai Lama

We are only as blind as we want to be. ― Maya Angelou

Spirituality doesn’t mean a blind belief in a spiritual teaching. Spirituality is a practice that brings relief, communication, and transformation. Everyone needs a spiritual dimension in life. Without a spiritual dimension, it’s very challenging to be with the daily difficulties we all encounter. With a spiritual practice, you’re no longer afraid. Along with your physical body, you have a spiritual body. The practices of breathing, walking, concentration, and understanding can help you greatly in dealing with your emotions, in listening to and embracing your suffering, and in helping you to recognize and embrace the suffering of another person. If we have this capacity, then we can develop a real and lasting spiritual intimacy with ourselves and with others. ― Thich Nhat Hanh

Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked. — Ralph Ellison

Blindness is an unfortunate handicap but true vision does not require the eyes. — Helen Keller

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. — Mark Twain

Our very eyes, Are sometimes, like our judgments, blind. — William Shakespeare

There are not sacred and profane things, places, and moments. There are only sacred and desecrated things, places, and moments-and it is we alone who desecrate them by our blindness and lack of reverence. It is one sacred universe, and we are all a part of it. — Richard Rohr

Man’s basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know. — Ayn Rand

An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

NOBEL SPEECH (excerpt from FULL LECTURE) by Toni Morrison
“Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise.” Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures. “Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise.”
      In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.
     One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, “Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead.”
     She does not answer, and the question is repeated. “Is the bird I am holding living or dead?”
Still she doesn’t answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.
     The old woman’s silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.
     Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. “I don’t know”, she says. “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”
     Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility.
     For parading their power and her helplessness, the young visitors are reprimanded, told they are responsible not only for the act of mockery but also for the small bundle of life sacrificed to achieve its aims. The blind woman shifts attention away from assertions of power to the instrument through which that power is exercised…

I look at the world — Langston Hughes

I look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space   
Assigned to me.
 
I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face—
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!
 
I look at my own body   
With eyes no longer blind—
And I see that my own hands can make
The world that’s in my mind.
Then let us hurry, comrades,
The road to find.

Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent — John Milton

When I consider
how my light is spent,
Ere half my days,
in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent
which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless,
though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker,
and present
My true account,
lest he returning chide;
‘Doth God exact day-labour,
light denied?’
I fondly ask.
But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies,
‘God doth not need
Either man’s work
or his own gifts;
who best
Bear his mild yoke,
they serve him best.
His state
Is Kingly.
Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and
Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only
stand and wait.’