The Different I With Different Eyes

As an author devoting his work to Christ, I am often privileged by being given glimpses into the Kingdom of Righteousness, either through a sudden transcendent epiphany or an intuitive awareness of His presence in the everyday scenes of life around me, giving me a faint flicker of an idea that soon sparks into the blazing flame of thought. Yet, it is only a taste, and because it is but a taste, even though a very powerful one, I must commit it to paper while it still lingers, just as the poet writes best while the kiss yet lingers on his lips. My imagination can often flesh out an idea that has started to fade, but there is nothing like an instant transfer while the revelation is still fresh.

In this way, I am occasionally allowed glimpses beyond the veil, a sudden understanding into the depths of the Trinity—often arriving during the quiet of night when my mind is settled and free from the troublesome concerns of the day—compelling me to rise from my bed, still bleary eyed as I am today, and try to capture it before it flits away again and my feet once more come back down to the earth, and I become the very plain and ordinary Eric that goes about his daily life in the world of mortals as do we all. Today I have been shown a glimpse of the workings of a higher way of living and loving. Now it is up to me to try to communicate this revelation I have only glimpsed, to find the words to flesh out a concept deeper than words alone will ever take a person, so that together you and I may strive to reach the point where we are slowly transformed into such creatures as may be permanently altered by the hands of the Lord of love.

The highest form of love occurs when the soul has been careful to keep her walk blameless, resisting temptation, begging forgiveness with bitter tears of repentance when she fails, and faithfully surrendering herself into the service of Christ the King, her Lord, Savior, and Master. When the soul thus offers herself unto Christ, He in turn will reveal His mind to her. And His mind is love. A very special kind of love, a love so deep that no one could know it but him unto whom it is revealed. When the person who possesses this kind of love turns his eyes on another, his soul sees the other’s very heart.

Before my conversion, I became highly adept at being able to read people, to see through them, to pin them to the wall. What I was able to see, however, was scheming, plotting, insurrection—in a word, sin. I was, if you will, the spoiled rotten princess Rosamond, her face grubby, her hair unkempt, so soon forgetting my peaceful slumber in The Wise Woman’s loving arms: “The wrong in her was this—that she had led such a bad life, that she did not know a good woman when she saw her—took her for one like herself, even after she had slept in her arms.” Yet there was a glimmer of good left in me, for when I was confronted by innocence, I was forced to turn away. I saw the darkness in another with startling acuity, to such a degree that I was able to see the good less and less, an increasing blindness to the things of goodness clouding my soul. I was filled with guilt and shame which mercilessly weighed me down.

When I became consumed with my secret sin, I felt the shame and guilt of this unholy preoccupation—like Gollum hell-bent on his “precious”—and the real world around me began to seem unreal: I felt distant, remote, lifeless, little more than a member of the undead walking. I felt no great passion stirring within my breast: I walked with leaden steps that didn’t feel the earth beneath, I saw with unseeing eyes, felt with unfeeling fingers, heard with unhearing ears; I had grown deaf to all but hell’s garish cacophony—cold from the ugly blemish I had allowed to tarnish my heart. My single greatest reality was my pain, my guilt, my suffering, my sin, my shame, my grief. I saw nothing else: only these things were real—they had become my world.

We will never see with the wide-open eyes of the deepest love while impurity lies buried within our hearts. Not one of us is innocent; confession and repentance are mandatory to see with the eyes of Christ, as much from a psychological perspective as a theological one. The key then, to holy living, is found in the renewing of our minds, the control center of our body. The first step in achieving this transcendent love is accomplished by aligning ourselves with the mind of Christ, careful not to let unconfessed sin, shame, and guilt be harbored in our hearts, for it will effectively deafen us to the voice of the Master. Indeed, sin must be dealt with first if one expects to achieve any higher level of living and reality. There is simply no other way.

Unlike the corrupted mind, the mind of love sees reality on every level of existence. The hidden things of the heart are exposed, and while such a gaze is aware of the faults in another, this focus serves as a means of correcting the problem, just as the physician must first uncover the cause before he can administer the cure. The transcendent love of Christ does not think of itself; its focus is intent on the loving of another. As I have said, I do not claim to always possess this kind of love, though I do believe, by the grace of God, it is possible. If one is careful to keep his heart pure, resisting temptation by immediately taking it to God and humbly asking for His help, promptly confessing any guilt or sin that has been incurred—then this opens the channel for the transferring of the transforming, transcendent love of Christ, allowing it to flow freely.

If we wish to have intimacy with our Lord and Savior, we must adore Him. If we begin to cry in the process, if we feel compelled to extend our hands toward heaven, then so much the better—but none the worse if we do not. The important thing is that within our hearts we adore Christ, that we bask in the awe of his wonder and holiness, beholding the sheer beauty of his majesty. We are to exalt our Lord and Savior, falling down and worshipping at his feet, praising his holy name. Queen Victoria had it right, when deeply moved by F.W. Farrar’s sermon on the second coming of Christ, she said, “Dean Farrar, I should like to be living when Jesus comes, so that I could lay the crown of England at His feet.”

As long as we continue to pursue our own selfish interests, we will continue to be blinded by the beam sticking out our eye: we can never see clearly when our focus or obsession is centered on ourselves alone. When I drive, I do look at the scenery passing by: I look down the road lying ahead of me—when I worship, I do not look at myself: I look beyond to the God who redeems me. He alone transforms, it is only when I am lost in the majesty and splendor of his presence that I willingly lay myself down at his feet to die, knowing he will redeem my life, as he redeems all things given unto himself. As Underhill writes: “The spiritual life of any individual has to be extended both vertically to God and horizontally to other souls; and the more it grows in both directions, the less merely individual and therefore the more truly personal, it will be” (Qtd. in Spirituality Today). Yet there is a specific order in which this must occur. The vertical must be attended to first—then the horizontal will more naturally take care of itself. The first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and the second hinges from it: to love your neighbor as yourself.

True love never imposes itself upon another; it will try to lead the way, but the other person is always capable of digging in his heels and refusing to follow. Love will see this and understand. It will not scorn. It will comprehend fully—all the hurt, pain, suffering, heartache, emptiness. Even if it has to turn itself inside out in the process, it will do everything in its power to administer the balm, to enact the cure, to soothe the hurt. Its hand will patiently continue to feed the mouth that bites it; its attempts at kindness will not retreat in hurt and wounded self-love when rebuffed.

Like the great mystics that have gone on before, I find myself disgusted with language and its inability to capture those things which only experience can teach. I know what it is to read only words, words, words—endless streams of words. But can they take you there, to the Reality beyond? That, I fear, is the question, and a worthy one, for I speak of things the mere surface intellect cannot grasp: the things of God no words can adequately express.

I can write of apples all day, but until you have seen one, held it in your hand, and bitten into its flesh, a few flecks of its juice spattering your face as the crisp “crunch” resounds in your ears when your teeth tear into its skin, you will find any attempt on my part of describing apples to be only rudimentary at best. But if you have ever eaten an apple, as you read my words, you saw beyond them: you could feel the juice spatter slightly against your face, you could hear the distinctive “crunch,” you could all but taste the sweetness as the juice trickled down your throat. Likewise, if you have never received the mind of Christ, your picture of love will necessarily be limited.

If you have ever read the writing of a profound author, you know how much depth it contains. Yet the work only contains the work; the author, on the other hand, not only contains the work but the mind behind the work as well. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that the deepest love would necessarily come from the author of love? He made the earthly love of which we have all had some degree of experience, yet he himself is so much more: the love that characterizes him is greater than the love he has woven in our human frailty. Every now and again, a ray of his divine love will filter through: this love will give us a glimpse that we will not soon forget, though we be hard pressed to communicate it. Consider: even with earthly love, describing it to someone who has never experienced it would be all but impossible. Ideally, however, we could demonstrate it, showing them our hearts, and ultimately taking them to the very source of all love, our Lord and Savior.

Love seeks to give itself away. The channel through which love passes—whether earthly or Divine—is often choked off for fear of hurt or rejection. Yet if we shut off the flow of love in either direction, we will have effectively shut off the flow in both directions. We do not possess this deeper love naturally. It has to be written on our hearts by the Author’s own tender touch, by the channel through which we are both loved of Him and through which we love Him in return. As Evelyn Underhill writes, it is the correspondence between “the poor soul and the rich God.” Our giving and our receiving of true love necessarily begins with the author of all love. If you wish this love for yourself, I must take you to the only place from whence all love flows. I must take you beyond the words to the author himself, who resides in the very center of eternity.

Now for another thought: If I drive a friend a short distance away over unfamiliar roads, I will need a map. Imagine if I retrieve the map, asking my friend who is sitting in the passenger seat beside me to let me know where to turn. Handing him the map, he takes it, unfolds it on his lap, and lets out an excited exclamation. “Oh! This must be one of Lord Bacon’s maps. He is one of the most brilliant mapmakers the world has ever known. I am a huge fan of his maps!”

“Eric! Check out the calligraphy with which the names are inscribed! Such a fine hand and steady stroke! Oh my goodness—do you have any idea how much this thing is worth?”

“Oh, in a minute already! But just look at the exquisite and delicate rendering of the streets! Such slender lines as they eye could see—and the rivers. Oh my goodness!”

“Oh, and see the quality of the paper Lord Bacon uses! He has to be one of the most brilliant of all mapmakers! I have several copies much like it at the house—Lady Lonier, Lance Gentrude—would you like to see them sometime?”

You catch my meaning. There is nothing wrong with oozing over paper and print, with being an ardent admirer of maps and their makers the world over. However, if, as in the case with my imaginary friend, we lose sight of the big picture—the reason for the map—we will soon lose our way. As long as we remember the purpose for which the map was designed, we are free to admire it: there is nothing wrong with admiring maps, especially when they are so finely rendered, possessing all the subtle brushstrokes of masterful genius. Yet we must remember why we have the map: since we do not know our way in these parts, the map is indispensable to us. We must have it to get to our destination. Still, it is not more important than the destination: whether exquisitely expressive or crudely crafted, its single greatest purpose is to get us to where we are going. Afterward, we can frame it or trash it either one, for it has little remaining importance, at least as pertains to this particular destination. Indeed, it will have served its purpose.

I fear that many people, however, are much like my fictitious connoisseur of maps. Our bibles are an important part of the Christian journey, which is the most obvious parallel to the map analogy. But just as we can exalt the importance of the bible over the reality of God, so too can we substitute good things—things like prayer, meditation, contemplation, fasting, almsgiving, church attendance, other Christians, and so forth in the place of God. The minute we confuse these things with the ultimate reality, the minute we begin paying more attention to these things for their own sakes instead of the God to which they point, is the minute we have lost our way. The bible then becomes so much paper and ink, the prayers fall short, the man or woman of God becomes the stumbling block—the albatross around our necks—the meditation and contemplation are no more than exercises of the surface intellect, almsgiving is reduced to self-righteousness at best. So too, we can speak of love until we turn fuchsia in the face. But if we have forgotten Christ in the process, we are no better off than my beleaguered colleague with his admiration of fine representations but little regard for true direction.

Assistant Professor of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University Todd E. Johnson, speaking of Evelyn Underhill’s Christ-centered tutelage under Baron von Hügel, writes: “Still, the main shift in Underhill’s thought at this time was the understanding that one’s relationship with God was not primarily a human ascent to the divine but God’s gracious condescension to humanity” (The Three Faces of Evelyn Underhill). This assures us that when we seek God, He may be found, yet we are not without our part in this process. To achieve the mind of Christ, one must bend his will—with or without warm, fuzzy feelings—into submission to Christ. This process involves a total dying of the individual consciousness into the consciousness of Christ. When we open our hearts to him—like the petals of a flower unfurled to the gentle spring shower—he will rain his love down on us until it spills over into the dry, thirsty crevices of the human souls surrounding us.

There is another aspect we struggle with repeatedly as well. In The Cloud of Unknowing by an anonymous mystic writing under the pseudonym “Dionysius the Areopagite,” circa 500 A.D. or before, there is a section of the introduction written by Evelyn Underhill I found quite pertinent. Like many of these older writings, the text is a bit archaic, but, like all the Christian mystics, it strives after the life of holiness where the Transcendent Love of John and the Charity of James are fused in an ever increasingly perfected whole, where Mary’s adoration and her sister Martha’s hospitality are seamlessly integrated, where the vertical and horizontal unite in a life overflowing to abundance, veritable cornucopias of the soul spilling over with the fruit of the Spirit. Underhill writes in the preface concerning the intentions of this mystic author:

Perhaps we are all beginners along this journey. At any rate, I do not know about you, but whether “ghostly devices” would help me or no (I am in the process of threading my way through this text to find out), I know that I certainly suffer from distracting and often lustful thoughts, memories which torment me, old sins, private struggles, and overall selfishness of character. So too, in my pursuit of drawing into the mind of Christ, my motives are often a mixture of virtue and self-centered gain, the latter of which is an unending irritation, for deep inside I so long to be pure. Further, there are many times I become frustrated in my struggle. It does not seem to be getting me anywhere, it often seems futile and hopeless, and further yet, I seem to think that I need to get something out of it: a better lease on life and the fulfillment of my deepest longings. Yet these things rarely seem to happen and I am once again forced back to the grindstone of humility.

I often find peace there, but sometimes it seems as if God is so distant—as if I am so vile He wouldn’t come if he could—and I despair. We each have an area that we struggle with most, I think, and in my case, my own aloneness comes back to haunt me, for, being a once married, perfectly healthy and normal human male, I long for sensual female companionship, to hold that special someone in my arms and stroke her face and her hair, to feel the warmth of her body in my arms, to nuzzle her neck and to trace the curves of her body and experience all the other aspects of the slow, steady enjoyment of one another that at times almost makes me want to weep at the thought. I strive to perish such fantasies from my mind, to center instead on my God and my all.

I know deep inside that I must serve the author of love no matter what He gives me or takes away: it is not a case of a joyless pursuit (though it can certainly seem this way at times) but rather of an acceptance of reality, for this ultimate reality is the only way to live in reality. I suspect that in his good time (and not until) he will provide me with the woman who will have been more than worth all the waiting, but even if he does not, would refusing to serve and draw close to him do me an ounce of good? I think not. Then I would not only be womanless but Godless as well. I know that he alone can fulfill the yearnings that lurk even deeper in my heart than these. He is, after all, the author of love, and though his kindness may seem to me harsh, yet in my more lucid moments I know that everything he does is for my betterment and in the end, all that he has done will bring me more fulfillment and peace than the granting of thousands of wishes I might have made on my own. I know this because I trust him: he has proven himself true. And while the scriptures clearly say that it is not good for man to be alone, yet if that is my lot and my destiny, I know it is because he has something even better in mind for me and I must crucify my impatience and frustration at the foot of his cross. I just wish it were not always so hard, but we were never promised ease or comfort, only companionship by Christ.

We love because Christ first loved us. When we commit our lives and our wills to Christ, asking him to renew and purify our minds from their corruption and filth, he will redeem our inner being. Then, and only then, we will truly look at the world through “different eyes.” These eyes will be the eyes of love. And yet, what do I mean by “eyes of love”? Is this love consumed with the passion of possession, or is it consummated by the ultimate emptying of oneself for the other, a form of renunciation rather than possession, of giving rather than getting?

If a man wishes to be the best husband he can be, he must forget himself and his failings (and hers too) and strive to give his wife what she needs; if a woman wishes to be the best wife she can be, she must forget herself and her failings (and his too) and strive to give her husband what he needs. In the process, both will become the best persons they could possibly be, both will “find themselves” in the loving of the other. Our husband, Christ, gave up hHis very life so that we may live. As his bride, the Church, our loving response in return is to give up ours, to surrender our lives over to his will and do what he commands. All we are asked to do is to seek him: with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind—with everything that is within us we must bend our wills like flowers toward the sun, forgetting what is behind and striving toward what lies ahead—and he will give us love, both for ourselves and for the giving away to others. This is the nature of love: love seeks to give itself away, and in the process of giving, it finds itself again. It is only by dying that we may truly live, for love is the deeper way.

“I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh . . .
and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”

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