Deep Seeing Eyes

The Yoruba tradition uses the term ashe to mean the essential divine nature in everything.  It is the idea that within all things lives sacredness if looked for with “deep seeing eyes”.  Even negative people or events are not void of ashe; it just takes deeper eyes to see it

                                                                                      Laura Berman Fortgang.  Little Book of Meaning, p.95

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Sometimes O Sacred One

I have trouble seeing your presence in other people

Sometimes

A lot of trouble

O I can see you in the bright blue sky

The white peaked mounting soaring

I can see you in the eagle, the hawk

In the deer who leap nimbly through the woods

even in the turkeys, predatory and messy

I can see you in the faithful people who sit

In old pews, keeping hope alive

In the young the beautiful

The healthy

It takes more work to see you in those people

Who for one reason or another are,

Shall we say,

Challenging.

And then there are others

Way too many others

Where I struggle to see you at all

My vision is blurred

There are so many things that blind me

Ideology (that’s a big one – I admit it)

Behaviors

Attitudes

All of a sudden all I can do is label

Categorize

Judge

I no longer have deep seeing eyes

With some people

(to my regret)

I am almost blind

Lord give me eyes that see

That recognize

Divine presence

For there is something divine, good, right

Something blessed in every person

If I have the eyes to see it

Yes, this idea challenges me

Expands me

I don’t want to believe this about some

(my favorite villains, who will go unnamed)

But even they

Even they

Have essential divine nature

I just have

To look

With

Seeing eyes