"Those things are beautiful which please when they are seen." - St. Thomas Aquinas
Her eyesight was among the best of anyone who ever lived. Yet, she probably never saw a sunrise nor would she recall seeing a flower or the face of anyone she loved. Still, with her exquisite sensibilities she could see the wind & discern the shape of love.
Blind from age two, Helen Keller lacked the rods & cones that detect light, send it through our optic nerves & enable its translation into the imagery our minds interpret. Yet, Keller possessed a more powerful gift: sacred sight. Her heart saw what most cannot.
Hindus have a beautiful way of symbolizing this with the dot, or bandi, women wear on their foreheads. This is "the third eye" that sees the sacred.
Still our actual eyes provide endless gifts if we can perceive beyond how they enable navigating the transactional world. "When we see beauty in sensible things, we are grasping their secret, living form," John O'Donohue wrote. "While the experience of beauty has a wonderful immediacy, it is not something that simply happens."
How can we deepen our sight? O'Donohue emphasizes a key. "The task of true knowing is slow and difficult; yet when pursued, it often opens us to the delight of being surprised and overtaken by beauty." If you seek peace, look to beauty.
Our eyes inform us a baby is sleeping. Embrace your third eye & awaken to beauty - as in the image that shows my son's first encounter with his newborn sister. To see this you must slow down.
Fear blocks "seeing." For example, those afraid to experience Renoir's nudes miss what Rodin observed, that if we want to see beauty we must look to the nude.
Want to see the wind? Close your eyes.
-Erie Chapman
Photographs: "Sunrise, Atlantic" & "Homecoming 1971" by Erie