EYES

In just a few wordless seconds, decades flashed by
like a sweeping drama of
other-worldly beauty and glory,
too wonderful to be true.

They were the same eyes when they
first opened their curious eyes on the earth.
They are the same eyes I will never
forget into eternity.

They were the same eyes of God, the God who greeted me
with a faint smile and soul-piercing and melting light
They are the same eyes of God,
of love, mercy, and forgiveness.

My eyes and my soul feasted on the
divine touchdown of our hearts,
enlarging my feeble tent with a grander hope and vision.
To know that I can finally see and be seen.

About a month after our adult children, a son-in-law, and a daughter-in-law visited us in Malaysia, I sat at a café in Gapyeong, Korea reflecting on the holy family ritual. It remains a mystery what triggered me to revisit the “Ritual of Leaving.” (I highlighted this sacred ritual in the Oct. 15 entry.) Once I did, I could not get out of it, until I found words, as inadequate and incomplete as they are, to capture what I felt and sensed. I relived the heaven-sent memory, and my eyes promptly were welled up with tears, but unable to course down my cheeks. My eyes were looking at the farthest mountain outside the window but nothing registered. I was seeing but not seeing. Instead, I had seen something else. In that almost trance-like experience, the above poem flowed out of me, inspiring a vision of what “seeing” can be.

An influential German Catholic theologian, philosopher, and mystic of the Middle Ages, Meister Eckhart, famously said, “The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God's eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.” All eyes are one: God’s eyes. If we do the hard work of being honest and vulnerable and let our false self retreat by simple and powerful awareness . . . What begins to glimmer and glow is the shy true self. Eyes become the souls’ window, allowing the light within to recognize the light searching from without. The divine light dance glows even brighter, having been joined by the Light Who was there all along. This was a mystery until I experienced it with my family.