…
I can’t shake it. The vision.

The moment I understood the COMPLEXITY OF THE SIGHT – how we choose to see.

The unveiling of the veil.
…

It was a long day for a weary soul. The heart was heavy with a hunger for the uncomfortable, yet there I was, craving comfort. A stomach of food, a drip of water, a pillow to lay on. I sat up straight and held the head high, but there was a throb. An aching inside I couldn’t put my finger on.

I was the one with the tired eyes. Those eyes I know too well – the ones exhausted by the weight of the world. You see, these eyes: they capture the scenes of life like a movie with multiple angles. The reel continues to run even when those eyes stop to blink, or the mind tries not to think.

…behind these eyes, the cliches come and the poetry flows and the mind just goes goes goes…

So, time and time again, tiredness blurs those eyes. Streaks appear in the scenes, among the mental processing of visual memory. This processing makes sight an experience beyond that of a movie (so let’s leave that metaphor behind the window). The vividness of moments can’t be vacuumed into a show reel: the dimensions of reality are irreplaceable.

As we live both before and behind these eyes, there is no way to transfer the dimensions of reality into a 2D, 3D or even 4D scale. There are too many factors – sight is a collision of the conceptual and the concrete. The places, the faces, the surfaces, the sensory factors of touch, taste, sound, smell and sight. Then the deeper dimensions of thoughts, and words spoken, and actions in motion. There is also the triggering of associated memories, those relationships between textures and emotions and experience.

So, yeah… the streaks? the blurring? …Those are beyond tiredness. Those are the blending of old and new memory. A collision sounds about right to describe the COMPLEXITY OF THE SIGHT.

…
See:

There, inside those tired eyes, I envisioned the pillow and the bed and the sleep that maybe, just maybe, would give this sight and mind some rest-bite. As I was there, head held high, I saw the window as the closest comfort. So I rested the face, seeking sleep on this shiny surface.

There, behind the window, I was skin on glass.

There, I could place the flesh on the cool, my warmth on lifelessness. It didn’t matter so much that I was losing colour in my face. It didn’t matter so much that I could see the sheen of this surface – making it fake… meaning it could break.

 I longed to bleed onto that glass.
Could the lifeless take life from me?
I longed not to breathe – not to see.
I couldn’t handle any more memories – those traumas of identity.

…
There it was.
Memories. Sight. Life.
There.

The vision.
The unveil of the veil.
…

For what distinguishes human from other forms of life?
The complexity of the mind.
Cognition.
Those cogs of the mind that run wilder with sight. No other creature sees with their mind.
Thus, for them, there is no complexity to the sight.

…
There.
The mind and the eyes – the complexity of sight realised.
I had almost shut the eyes and let the sight bleed into the glass.
Yet, I chose to see.
I chose to keep the sight fixed beyond the window.
…

There I was, tired eyes again, behind the window. Yet, I could break from my blindness and look both before and behind that glass. I had the ability to see. I had the ability to capture and store sight and memory. I was eyes on one side of a divide, but I was a mind of infinite lines. For this complexity was cognition.

The weariness, the worries, those things of the world – they were within the own mind, behind the window. The weightlessness, the true worth, those things outside of this world – they are beyond the window.

For the eyes are the windows to the soul. So these eyes, this mind, they are the glass line between the inside and outside of what it means to truly live, to truly see. There is a window to the soul, unseen by our eyes and mind, that is simple, not complex.

…
You see:

I couldn’t shut the eyes. I couldn’t shut the mind. I had to open the heart, to hold the window frame against those aches and pains of hunger and thirst.

It was ok to bleed my broken, weary heart on the glass, for that was where I could sink beyond the shiny surface and enter the space the mind and eyes can’t fully fathom  – the heart.

In vulnerability there is a new vividness of vision, for from fragmentation comes a new shard of sight. My uncomfortableness had stemmed from the heart. As a creature of comfort – this world is not home. There is confusion, collision, and conflict in thoughts… For I am not made for this world. You were not made for this world. Currently, we sit behind the window. Waiting. All we can do is fix our eyes and minds, our hearts, to what is beyond the window – and as we wait, we can have faith.

…
The complexity of life is how we see things.
FAITH is how we frame things.
This perspective changes everything
…

Faith reframes the eyes and mind from the world’s unwillingness to cross the divide. Faith fills the window frame and changes the colour and clarity of the glass lens so the sight and mind can be trained to believe in what cannot be seen. 

The complexity of sight and mind comes through a faith that is not blind, but that is trained to see what is beyond and that believes that the battle of life and death was won. For we can set our souls beyond the glass, and find clarity in identity, restoration of memory, as Christ is our hope for eternity.

…
Now this is the vision:

The victory from which true hope comes from. A crucifixion and resurrection and ascension that doesn’t just envision eternity, but gives momentary vision of eternity. What we see now is a window to eternity. For “…he has put eternity into man’s heart” {Ecclesiastes 3:11, ESV}. Another translation frames how we cannot fathom this, as we wait behind the glass:

It is beautiful how God has done everything at the right time. He has put a sense of eternity in people's minds. Yet, mortals still can't grasp what God is doing from the beginning to the end [of time].

My prayer is that we may see and believe beyond the complexities of our own cognition.

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May we remember that there are dimensions we can’t begin to fathom through worldly screens and scenes. Instead, may we set our sights and souls on eternity. May our hearts be changed as we let not our lives bleed, but our love bleed through these glass windows that hold only our breaths before we go beyond – to eternity.

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