Let us prepare our souls to receive the sacred myth of scripture:
Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ Matthew 25:34-40
Together let us focus on these words in this passage: “When was it that we saw you…?”
One way to read this passage is to understand it as Jesus inviting us to see. Not just to look, but to actually see. “Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear?”
he asked in Mark 8:18. For indeed it is the case, is it not? That we can look straight at something and not really see it at all. We can look at somebody and project our own prejudices onto them. And sure enough, we’re looking at our prejudices then, and not seeing the person for who he or she is, in themselves, for themselves. All too often I look at the people nearest and dearest to me, and what I am looking at is not them, but instead I look at what they are to me – what they mean to me – what they do for me, or what I want them to do or be for me. Am I seeing who they are, as they see themselves, as they experience their own lives? Not often enough.
I have a new friend in Ojai, Jennifer, who took a walk in a meadow with her young daughter, who pointed out a flower and asked, “Mommy, what is that flower?” And Jennifer answered, “We call it a daisy but that isn’t really what it is, is it? It is so much more than the name we call it!” Now that is having eyes and actually seeing, isn’t it? Seeing that there is so much more to the daisy than its name. Seeing that there is a mystery in the daisy far deeper than mere looking can behold.
The earliest monks and nuns of the Christian church began their practice of mystical contemplation – of divine seeing – in the 4th and 5th centuries. The emerging Catholic church was adopted as the state religion of the Roman Empire. That right there is backwards, no? Because it was the Roman Empire that murdered Jesus by torture on the cross. The usual consequences of a state religion began right away, bringing deep corruption into the church. To escape the hollow, performative sort of faith that Christianity was becoming, people fled to the far reaches of the Empire to live simply and spend most of their time in silent contemplative prayer. They wanted to spend their lives with the intention of not just looking, but actually seeing.
There is a collection of short stories and sayings of these early monastics called The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers. It is a brief, pithy, and sometimes downright entertaining account of their experiences of contemplation. In one passage, a monk, dying, offers up these last words to his fellow monks: “The monk must be all eye.”
I must be all eye.
You must be all eye.
Not just looking, but seeing.
You look at a bill for a prescription drug. But do you really see it? Not just the outrageous figure in the box marked “Payment due”, the number you’ll write when you’ll grudgingly make your payment for it. Do you see the system that generated this outlandish bill? Do you see the money flowing from pharmaceutical companies to politicians to discourage them from reforming the health care system to make that drug as affordable in America as it is in Mexico and Canada and Europe? And do you see the other people looking at that same bill and observe the despair on their faces because of their inability to pay it? And do you see the One within you who is doing the seeing? To put it into the metaphor of Jesus’ parable, when you see those people, do you see the king?
Now that is divine seeing. Seeing God through God’s eye.
Meister Eckhart, German mystic and priest of the 14th century, preached these words: “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.”
Mindfulness is paying attention to your own experience – mental and physical – in the moment, without judgment, and with compassion.
If you do mindfulness practice for a while, you’re likely to get to a point where you are paying attention to everything you associate with yourself. Your thoughts, bodily sensations, urges, the narratives that you create to make sense of these experiences. You pay attention to your ideas of your roles in society, and your perceptions of what others expect from you. You are attending to everything about yourself. And then it hits you. Is that to which I’m attending doing the attending? Is what is being watched doing the watching? Is what is being observed doing the observing?
The Buddhist answer to that question is that there is no self. There’s no observer but consciousness itself. The Hindu answer is that Atman or Brahman – pure consciousness - is doing the observing. The Christian answer is that the Christ is doing the watching. God is doing the watching. God – not our small-s selves – is at the center of our being.
Because God is love, as it says in the first letter of John. And what is love? Love is attention. When you love somebody, you gaze at them. You listen to them. You observe them without judgment. You let them be who they are, in themselves – not just what they are to you, or what they do for you. That attention is mindfulness. Attention is prayer. Prayer is attention. Attention is love. Attention is seeing. Seeing is God.
And if love is all God is, that’s more than enough God for me.
The eye of deep attention is God’s eye. The eye that doesn’t just look, but actually sees. To know this is to see God. To know God. To be one with God. The goal state of mystical contemplation.
When we turn that eye to the powers and principalities of this world, when we turn that eye to the structures of the economy and of the government, we go from looking to seeing. Seeing with compassion. We see the faces of the families torn asunder by America’s inhumane immigration system. We see into the hearts of people hurt by the current anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and legislation. We see into the minds of people infected by lies and conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy. And this seeing moves our hearts to move our hands to vote, to move our legs to march and organize, to move our voices to speak out for economic and environmental and racial justice.
Again, if our seeing drills down deep enough, gets densely pixelated enough, we can see all the way in, all the way down, to Seeing itself. Then we are one with that seeing. One with that divine eye.
Deep contemplation leads to serious action for social progress. Being serious about spiritual practice – meditation and contemplation in any of their many forms – prepares us to engage in the hard work of changing the system. Mystical contemplation prepares us to look at the systemic problems of society without being blinded by ideological filters of any kind. It trains us to see things as they actually are, instead of looking at them with the colored glasses of dogma or doctrine or other prejudicial opinion.
It seems to me that churches are, or at least ought to be, fitness centers for divine love. And love, let’s face it, is often a hard lift. Church ought to be where we engage in the discipline of going from looking to seeing. Where we train in our ability to pay attention – attention to everybody and everything. Which turns out to take time and effort, and a gathering for practice at least once a week. Welcome to it!
“When was it that we saw you…?”
When did we see the king? The Christ? When did we attend to attention itself? When are we conscious of consciousness itself? When do we meet God face to face?
When we care enough to imagine the possible consequences for people of public policy decisions. Caring enough to go beyond looking and enter into seeing. Caring enough for white people to begin to see what black people feel in encounters with police. Mystical contemplation – the awareness that the one doing the contemplating is God, who is love, and not our small-s selves – this contemplative practice enlightens our moral imaginations to inspire us to do the right thing for others and for society at large.
At its best, contemplation leads to action. At its best, action leads to contemplation. Contemplation is not just the task for hermits in the desert. It is the task for ordinary Christians like you and I….. so that we may see