Seeing is believing…???

So our Monastic Library here at Mariya uMama weThemba is in a bit of disorder. It was down the hill and had to come up the hill. In the process of being boxed and moved, it also got shuffled. And we are making changes in how it is shelved to make it more friendly – all nice things and primarily my work for the next bit of time.

So I came across this “book” pictured above. It was nestled in with things from Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Merton, among others. I was whipping my way through books putting them in categories like “Monastic History” and “Religious History”. As I glanced at this book trying to settle in my mind where it would go I saw, in the picture, a monk in a habit pushing some type of broom… Was this some type of contemporary Franciscan thing? Was it a book on the spirituality of cleaning? I struggled to make sense. There are a lot of strange books in a monastic library.

Slowly it began to dawn on me it was no book at all. No quirky monastic order. Just the ever-so-mundane operating instructions for a carpet cleaner that had somehow made its way into the monastic library. But having realized that, I was still left to wonder why the manufacturer had put a monk in habit on the cover of their book… reality eventually crept in.

I find these sorts of things quite amusing; what the mind will do to make sense of things that don’t make sense. BUT if I leave it there then I have left a humbling learning opportunity in the dust.

In this silly example is an illustration of the way we see what we want or what we expect, not what is in front of us. Its not just that we project what we want to see, but our experience and context pre-disposes us to see things. We look at the world through the lens of our own life. So I see a monk in a habit on the cover of an operating manual for a vacuum device…

In this case it is innocent and silly – and harmless.

But when I am in South Africa looking though my North American lenses, what is distorted? When I look through my white male lenses, what do I mis-perceive about folks who are neither white nor male?

When I looked at this book cover, my monastic lenses clearly filled in some blanks in a way that, I think, is a compliment to the guy on the cover. But in general when we “look” at folks and fail to see who they are, it is no compliment. When we “listen” to people without really hearing what they say, it is nothing less than a lie.

In the Christian tradition we hold that God knows us as we truly are. God sees what is in our hearts and knows what is on our tongues. I firmly believe this, though there are days I wish I didn’t – days when my heart is in an ugly space and when my words have been derisive or dismissive. Yet the faith is that God not only knows us (knows me), but that God loves us (loves me). And I really do believe this.

The opportunity is to take the risk to know myself more deeply and more fully. Knowing that I’m the guy who sees monks on equipment brochures tells me something about what is in my heart and also how my assured judgement is much less than assured.

In fact, I have to give up the entire illusion of certainty. That doesn’t leave me arrested and motionless. It means I have to proceed in faith rather than in certainty.

Now I’m ready to take on that vacuum cleaner and all its spiritual demands…