The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!    -Matthew 6:22-23

Seeker,
What images have you absorbed today with the daylight?

Looking back to childhood,
I am struck
by how often we had our windows cleaned.

Every other week,
with ladder, bucket and cloth,
a window-cleaner appeared.

After a wash and wipe,
crystal clarity
brought into sharper focus beauty with the blight.

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to (us)                          as it is, infinite.   -William Blake

With each passing moment
countless images flicker
before our ever-hungry eyes.

Such a volume of visual stimulation
illuminates optic nerves
and fires the frenzied neurons in our brains.

Cascading thoughts,
ideas, visions, and sensations
course through our pulsing heart-center.

Picture the graphic noise
that illustrates
the news of just one day:

moving messages and retinal flashes,
tinted by culture, colored by ideology,
all refracted through the passion and pain we call perspective.

What today have you seen or selected,
overlooked or filtered,
blindly blocked or deflected?

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what the Holy One has prepared for those who love God”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of the Almighty. -1 Corinthians 2:9-10

Whether clouded by confusion,
fogged by anger, steamed with passion,
smudged by cynicism,

or made dusty with distraction;
the opaque lens of the soul
requires regular wiping.

We can learn to cut through clutter to clarity,
and welcome whatever life presents
with the bright-fresh eyes of a child.

We don’t see things as THEY are. We see things as WE are.  -Talmud

If you are about the gospel work,
with a head for justice and a tender heart,
it helps each day to cleanse the lens.

We dare not disregard the darkness,
nor turn away from problems and pain.
We face instead each morning’s light, to rinse our eyes in mercy’s rain.

When the world looks always grimy,
when hope and possibility are obscured,
that’s the time for window wiping.

Clean the panes with wonder and lament,
for the tears of sorrow and laughter you share,
let love’s light in to dissipate despair.

No matter where your eyes come to rest,
will you look long enough and lovingly,                                                                                                   till the light breaks through at last?

Create in me a clean heart O God,                                                                                                   and put a new and steadfast spirit within me.   -Psalm 51:10

joe