Dear Friends:

Our gospel reading for this Sunday is the story of a blind man named Bartimaeus who sat near the city gate of Jericho when Jesus and a large crowd of followers were leaving the city. Eager to be seen and healed, Bartimaeus persistently cries out to get Jesus’ attention, despite being hushed and dismissed by the people surrounding him.

Rather than be dissuaded by the crowds who shush Bartimaeus, Jesus stops and calls back to him, drawn, as he often was, to persistence, “What do you want me to do for you?”

I’ve been in a number of clergy retreats over the years in which we were asked to respond to that very same question. But never have my responses been quite as urgent as Bartimaeus’ simple answer: “Rabbi, I want to see.”

Over and over again in the gospels, inability to see is a metaphor for the inability to discern the deeper truth beneath and within the chaos and confusion of everyday life. For instance, the religious authorities who most often confronted Jesus were unable to “see” the rich, wild beauty of the world because they could only perceive it as something to tame and keep in order. It follows that their view of the external world limited any deeper truths they might have learned if their eyes had been opened.

“To crooked eyes truth may wear a wry face,” J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote. We have become aware in the last few years of viral pandemic, racial reckoning, and political polarity that truth and reality can become malleable commodities. It requires courage and persistence to live with full vision in a time when truth itself is in question. It also requires examining, honestly, the inner eyes of our hearts.

Perhaps there is no better time than now to make Bartimaeus’ request our own, “I want to see.”

Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche, speaks of the sacred space within us and describes the connection between the inner and outer realities:

Many of us are not aware of the sacred space within us, the place where we can reflect and contemplate, the space from which wonderment can flow as we look at the mountains, the sky, the flowers, the fruits and all that is beautiful in our universe, the space where we can contemplate works of art.

This place, which is the deepest in us all, is the place of our very personhood, the place where we receive the light of life and the murmurings of the Spirit of God. It is the place in which we make life choices, and from which flows our love for others.*

To be aware of the place from which flows our love for others…what could be more sacred and true? If only we could become more familiar with that sacred space within, we would get to know the source that reveals the Spirit and murmurings of God. Perhaps Bartimaeus has shown us the way: “Rabbi, I want to see.”

In Christ,

Amelie+

*Jean Vanier, “The Christian Life” in Essential Writings (New York: Orbis Books, 2008).