Deeper 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 I have trouble remembering

That Sacred came down

Incarnated

That Sacred made itself touchable

Seeable

In that incarnation we call the earth

Bang

And Sacred was everywhere

And in everything

I have no troubling believing

That the first incarnation was in the

Moment we called creation

I can see Sacred in the bright blue sky

The white peaked mounting soaring

In the eagle, the hawk

In the deer who leap nimbly through the woods

even in the turkeys, predatory and messy

But the sacred also came down in a person

A baby

A brown man who walked the dust of Palestine

Who taught and lived and died

Divine nature beautifully aroused and visible

To remind us that the Divine is in people too

Those seemingly twisted and messed up creatures

Who afflict the planet

Their very home

I can little trouble seeing the divine in the faithful people who sit

In old pews, keeping hope alive

I an often see Sacred in smiling children

In the enthusiastic young

But it takes more work to see Sacred in those people

Who for one reason or another are,

Challenging.

The one who is violent

Or who struggles with addiction, and turns his desires in on himself

In the one is fearful

And then there are others

Way too many others

Where I struggle to see Sacred Presence at all

My vision is blurred

There are so many things that blind me

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

Greed

Fear

Cruelty

Lies

People actively tearing others down to build themselves up

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

Deeper eyes