Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Blindness and Seeing (Science of Relations: Part 2)

Why should I care about "Science of Relations?"

 

As an Orthodox Mother, one of my life struggles is to rightly see the contours of reality and to help bring my children to be able to see too. I got that idea about needing to develop the “contours of reality” from Bishop Irenei in The Beginnings of a Life of Prayer

 



 

It’s one of those books, like The Philokalia, that I can read only a couple of paragraphs at a time. And then I have to read those same paragraphs over and over, over the course of several days. Of course, those are just MY current readings. 

If you are wondering what YOU should read, ask your priest! 😀

But let’s get back to BLINDNESS and SEEING. Think of all the times Jesus encountered blind men in the Gospels. It was not only because those particular men needed physical sight. It is because we are all blind - spiritually blind - and need new sight. 

 

Obviously, the most important way to get this true sight is living the life of the Church: Prayer, Sacraments, Scripture, Lives of the Saints, Alms-giving, Fasting, etc.

 

But in addition to the Life of the Church, it seems that God in his mercy gives us art as a means of seeing reality. In times prior to our Modern Life, this is what art meant to do - portray reality through patterns. 

 




Musical patterns, nature patterns, image patterns, story patterns. 


 

When oral traditions of storytelling - from all over the world - end up repeating the same patterns and images, it is not because people just happen to find comfort somehow in these images. It is because they are glimpses of true TRUTH embedded within the creation, truth that can’t help but come out.

 


In this fallen world, we see only in shadow. In our own society, people no longer look to religion to tell what is true. Mankind can do it! 

I taught public high school for ten years and my students often voiced this desire. I once had a young man, bright of mind, slight of stature, a 9th grader with his dark bangs hanging over his eyes, explain it to me perfectly: “The Scientific Method is my measure of reality. If I can’t see it, taste it, smell it, touch it, or hear it - it doesn’t exist.”


It’s pretty hard to see the unseen if that is one’s idea of reality!


You might be thinking, that’s too bad for that kid, but I’m an Orthodox Christian. I know unseen reality exists.

True, but I think it would be fair to assume that as members of our age, our way of seeing is effected by the ways of thinking around us. We swim in the pool of our times. And there is pee in the pool. It's hard to avoid. 

But we can try to draw our minds back to reality. We can experience the unseen as incarnated patterns in paintings, music, and stories: like in thorns, a touch, lips, and life. Embedded in a fairytale, we find images of sin and death, the Body and Blood of Christ, and Life.

As a human person, much less a particular kind of person called an Orthodox Mother, it’s worth paying attention to life and looking at God’s creation, along with the creations of His creations. 



Our children are going to read something. Listen to something. Look at something.  It’s worth putting true stories and music and art in front of them.

And then paying attention to them.

And being open to what we see. 

And what connections we see between them.

Snow White


Next time I will share with you a whole basketful of cool resources to learn more about fairytales and the science of relations. For now, I hope you enjoy your own delightful connections that pop up in this whole big world of God’s. Open your eyes to notice them!

 

 

2 comments:

  1. It feels like you and I are on similar paths, almost as if I could have written this post! I love it when the patterns meet- when I read a spiritual book and a fictional book or other nonfiction and find the same ideas in them. Recently, I found an old copy of Sophie Koulomzin’s “Our Church and Our Children” and was amazed at how well her introductory comments match Charlotte Mason’s principals, especially “Children are born persons,” and “Education is the science of relations.”

    ReplyDelete
  2. It feels like you and I are on similar paths, almost as if I could have written this post! I love it when the patterns meet- when I read a spiritual book and a fictional book or other nonfiction and find the same ideas in them. Recently, I found an old copy of Sophie Koulomzin’s “Our Church and Our Children” and was amazed at how well her introductory comments match Charlotte Mason’s principals, especially “Children are born persons,” and “ Education is the science of relations.”

    ReplyDelete