Sitting in a blind for fourteen hours a day for three days is more difficult than it first appears. To put it plainly; it’s boring. I don’t like boredom. I am a human doing. Or at least, that’s what I think I am when I don’t stop to think about it.
Any number of doings in the blind can help with the boredom of being. I wait for predetermined times to have water or food, I adjust the angle of my binoculars, I even change my slouching posture. Eventually, all this doing wears thin, I need to be, I need to pray.
The blind is an ideal place to contemplate God, to think so quietly that thoughts themselves can be seen instead of blindly accepted. What rests beyond being is an unveiling of a sort, it is the receding of my judgements about a place or landscape… the same boring view each day …and in its place is a kind of light. But the light, whether it be the sun or God, cannot be seen by doing anything. The light can only be felt, we can only see what the higher level shines upon. For the sun, our eyes pick up the trappings of planet earth, material reality. For God, we might yet glimpse the trappings of our mind, the meaning of our earthly garments.
At 96 (degrees) in the blind, I wore few garments on my body, but I did observe a particular rock formation rise from the hills each morning. Despite seeing the same view, I began to see changes in light and sky and clouds and for all the bemoaning about the lack of doing, each day of being became more intriguing. By the third day I looked forward to the way the light revealed new angles of the familiar local geology. I took a moment during sunrise and followed a solitary cloud drifting across my limited frame. I don’t know for sure, but the cloud appeared to stop above the apex of my attention and hover, just for a moment, to remind me that whatever it is I am attending to, the Lord waits for me on the edges.
I wonder what He thinks of the view.
Blind Light is printed and framed in two sizes, 24”x16” and 30”x20”, to reflect the small view from the blind and my own limited perception of the world. Perhaps when you admire this art on your wall, you might be reminded that there is yet much more to see beyond your current view. Beyond the blind, the light still shines.