Soup on Wednesday: Food for Thought - What do we see?

With this week's Lectionary text about the Man Who Was Formally Blind, I thought some immersing facts about what we see, our don't, might be of interest.

Our 14 year-old son shared the following two bits of information. First, all eyes have blind spots for which our eyes compensate. Sometimes with greater or lesser degrees of success. I remember reading an article about watch keeping in which a former military officer shared that the military teaches people to constantly sweep with their eyes to help avoid these blind spots. This I knew. What I didn't know, is that our brains turn our eyes off (causing momentary blindness) when we sweep/turn our heads fast, to keep ourselves from becoming dizzy. This is why when watching a film in which the camera turns fast we might feel ill.

Secondly, our son shared one of the ways the internet is evolving. It is no longer just messages sent between people. Cars, garage-doors, refrigerators, ovens, furnaces, etc. are also all connected. Last year a ton of spam was sent out from a hacked ... refrigerator. Hmmm.

Because this week's text deals with people: how we see one another and the costs of living the way we do, I thought this blog post to be interesting. Did you get a little sense of "ouch," too? Our attitudes often make huge differences in what we see, and hence solutions to various problems.

One piece of information that the post didn't mention I'll relate through an antidote. While working as a college chaplain I got to know the custodian quite well. He was a recovering alcoholic who had lived on the streets for years. He was a delightful fellow with a sharp mind, a generous spirit, and a compassionate heart. One evening he told me he was going to get kicked out of the halfway house because he started drinking again. "I don't think I'm an alcoholic. When I've been on the streets, I am often dry. I can't afford to be comatose. I think my real problem is that all of this is too secure for me. I think I sabotage myself to put me back on the street." He quit the janitorial job the next afternoon.

With that in mind, I wonder how successful the apartment complex was. I wonder if we (all of us) would be better it give out abandoned boats? I think the mayor of San Francisco tried this a while back, but I can not recall the details.

Anyway, it is all food for thought.

Blessed Be,
Joel