learning to see!

ok so i have started my new book from one of my favorite new christian philosophers, Josef Pieper. brilliant man. i am currently reading his Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation. just amazing, deeply thought out ideas of our desires to come and worship God.

in his second chapter i was really challenged as he spoke about both physical sight and spiritual sight. here is an excerts from the book

Man’s ability to see is in decline…we mean the spiritual capacity to percieve teh visible reality as it truly is. To be sure, no human being has ever really seen everything that lies visibly in front of his eyes. The world, including its tangible side, is unfathomable. Who would ever have perfectly pereceived the countless shapes and shades of just one wave swelling and ebbing in the ocean! and yet there are degrees of perception. Going below a certian bottom line quite obviously will endanger the intergity of man as a spiritual being. It seems that nowadays we have arrived at this bottom line.

He goes on to talk about being on a boat/cruise and listening to the crew and people talk about things and the occasional remarks of sight. “couldn’t see anything last night, there was nothing to see”. nothing to see??? how often do we fall into this. we have indeed lost the ability to see beyond and to preceive at any real depth. Josef talks about how our technology is partially to blame for this. or natural sense of sight and smell have been lowered, but we cover it up by saying we have binoculars, compass, and radars. the world is full of ‘visual noise’ as Josef suggests. He also talks about the visual consumptions and consumerism that we participate in on a daily basis. we miss the beauty of things before us. how often do we pass by things and just miss out some amazing visual beauty or something even deeper beyond sight. i was reading this as i was flying over colorado and looked out the window and again was just blown away by the beauty of this world i mean the picture doesn’t do it justice i’m sure…but wow

lastly one of the most insightful comments he makes is when creating art work, such as sculpting the human face, he says that one always sets out to study ever bit of that face before beginning. they understand the curves and shades and how it all works. they see everything there is to be seen in that before they begin so that they may create their masterpiece. Josef says the way of combating this visual noise is to dive into the artistic realm by creating art. doesn’t have to be anything spectacular just the engaging of creation causes one to be more visual in the physical and spiritual as they are looking inside and out to create. there is indeed so much to see in the world and my desire is to slow down in the pace and block out a lot of the visual noise so that i can focus in on the truly unfathomable depths of this world that God has created and on God himself.  before putting up different forms of contemplations that could help in this. what are some ideas that you all might have? or thoughts about this visual noise?