looking through me

Tag: vision

March 15, 2016

watching the tree

One tree in the backyard captivates me.

A few weeks after it surrendered its last orange of the season, a new cycle began. Tiny, white knobs elongated into plump furled buds. Clusters of buds became clusters of blooms on slender stems no thicker than a toothpick.

But then the forecast changed. A storm was coming.

I fretted over the blossoms: how would they withstand the wind and the rain?

If the flowers fall before the fruit sets, there won’t be any oranges next year. Unlike lemon trees which produce year round, orange trees take ten months to bring one annual crop to fruition.

So when the skies cleared and the winds subsided, I took stock. Some blooms littered the ground, but the little tree held onto most of its flowers. Delicate petals that brown or wither from the lightest human touch weathered a thunderstorm with aplomb!

I continue to check on the tree each day, and I remind myself that hundreds of buds lead to dozens of flowers, which lead to tens of immature oranges. Only some will finish the long course and ripen into edible fruit.

But I can’t tell today which those will be. I can’t predict which bud will be knocked off before blooming or which flower will fall without an orange setting in behind it or which teeny piece of fruit will hold on for months and months and mature into a juicy navel orange next winter.

And as I ponder the wonder of a solitary orange tree—as I revel in each tenuous stage in the cycle—I start to wonder where I am in the process. What is budding in me today? How many buds will bloom? How many blooms will set in fruit? How many of those will survive and ripen over many months into meaningful produce?

Somehow I overlooked the stages of maturation. I expected fruit to appear in an instant. I watched for ready-to-pick peace and joy and gentleness and self-control in my life.

But maybe I should stop searching for fruit and start praying over each bud and blossom—not knowing which ones will make it but confident that as I tend to each through the storms and the sunshine, fruit will come.

 

 

 

 

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March 8, 2016

eye to eye

I wore heels to work today, and the office manager wore flats. Coming around a corner at the same time we ended up nose to nose. She has beautiful eyes, but it caught me off guard to see them so close to mine.

I’m not accustomed to being at eye level with other adults. The viewpoint throws me off.

I see the world a certain way, and I’m prone to forget there are other perspectives. At 5′ 1″ I’m never going to see what my 6′ 5″ uncle sees when he walks in a room. I’m never going to live life as a teen mother or a middle-aged father or an only child. I probably won’t ever experience the view as a matriarch or a painter or an immigrant or a CEO or a lead pastor or a tightrope walker. I can only imagine what a room full of strangers looks like to an extrovert.

That doesn’t negate my view. My view is valuable, but it is limited.

Like everyone else’s.

Sometimes my vantage point doesn’t seem to be factored in . . . but how would anyone else know what I see? How would a mom multiple times over know how a childless woman feels when she holds a baby? How would a social butterfly know what a wallflower notices from the party’s periphery? How would the elders of the church know what Sunday looks like for a single woman in her thirties or a widow in her eighties?

I can put on heels and experience a moderately taller view of the world. It’s harder to put on someone else’s reality and see life from an unfamiliar angle. Yet when I remember no one else has my exact frame of reference, it’s a little bit easier to remember I’m not living their lives and seeing what they see either. Our blind spots overlap.

But maybe we can appreciate those eye-to-eye moments when we hit the corner at the same time and catch a glimpse of life at someone else’s eye level.

 

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