Center for Christogenesis June Fundraiser
Seeing Anew
Seeing with the body
Seeing with the body. Recently our board member, Brian Graham, attended an art exhibit in Los Angeles, entitled, “Your body is a space that sees.” (https://liahalloran.com/your-
“Christ has no body now on earth but yours.Yours are the eyes with which He looks Compassion on this world, Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good, Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,Yours are the eyes, you are His body.”
The body sees what the mind cannot see. How do we see with the body? Do we let our minds rest in our hearts and open our eyes to perceive the world? To “see with the body” is to “touch,” “taste,” and “experience” all creatures, all elements, all that lives and breathes. We are to see what is not visible, the power of God shining through all reality.
Teilhard de Chardin wrote that “by virtue of Creation, and still more the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.” As we seek to deepen our power of sight, we have the opportunity to begin seeing the Christic Center – the power and life of God – in all reality. When we reach this reality of seeing the Christic Center in all materiality, a new light shines at the center of our vision and we have access to the cosmic reality that surrounds us.
Wise words, and thank you. When we see ugliness and deformity, we intuit how lacking the whole, undamaged person, animal or thing is in the perfections of beauty. The creative, healing impulse God gives us inspires doctors to repair and artists to transform a victim into a hero, a Christ.
As far back as early childhood, developmental psychologists tell us that experience is rooted in the ground plan of the body, in particular, but not limited to gender. Boys, for example, are wont to naturally build towers, play with and create projectiles, and with few exceptions, are given to aggressive play. The upside of that is put to constructive use as adults, the dark side to warring, territoriality, fascination with weaponry, toxic patriarchy, and control. Ever hear of a woman mass shooter? In the spiritually enlightened and practiced person, Spirit super animates the natural faculties (5 senses), transforming them to see, feel, taste, think, love, act, and hear as God does, irrespective of any of the usual man-made, discriminatory markers. Spirit is an equal opportunity incarnator, leveling and integrating the many unequal playing fields the untransformed are given to devise. Spirit, the co-present substance of all created form, and the highest part of matter, appears in and as persons, places, things, and activities. Spirit is all and in all, not all in some.
The perfect blue sky and very cold still morning, here in Brisbane, Australia, infuse my whole being and transform a potentially busy day into a beautiful adventure.