Be Thou my Vision
Rocked the 5 piece band, singing the International Christian College song back in 2004.
Open the eyes of my heart
Another popular worship song from that time.
Eyes. Seeing
And often it was all about how to see others. Open the eyes of my heart, to see you (God), open the eyes of my heart, to have compassion for others.
There’s nothing more powerful
Than being seen, truly by the other.
(and loved when also being seen in truth and reality)
Yet.
Eyes have a habit of not seeing clearly.
Eyes have a habit of looking outwards with fear, judgement, desire, criticism, resentfulness, inferiority and indifference.
And those same eyes, look inwards, with the same.
Vision is central to your presence and creativity. To recognise how you see things can bring you self knowledge and enable you to glimpse the wonderful treasures in your life secretly holds (John O Donohue, Anam Cara, p 58)
If you know me well, you will know that this book has been a dwelling place for me in the last year, today it was these pages 57-58, on Vision. In which JoD describes all the ways of seeing above.
This morning, I sat and ate a lovely greek breakfast in town, and let the words, and my sensing of them fill me, bring me that awareness, to feel love towards myself in how I used to see myself.
Trying to reach a harsh perfection, Not being good enough.
Totally self critical and beating myself up
Small me and feeling inferior.
High judgement of myself.
Feared..what I might find
Thats not only what I thought I was on the inside, but how I looked at myself too, in fact.. I didnt look at myself. I didnt want to go there.
As I read it this morning I realised quite how much my healing journey of the last 5 years has been about healing of my vision, healing of the way I see myself, from fear and judgement slowly slowly to gentle tender curiosity, to compassionate eyes, loving eyes even.
To truly love myself, I have to see myself in love.
I have to love myself, with gentle, compassionate eyes
Where love opens, love warms, love brings light to what stayed hidden, love sees.
It’s love, it always is love.
The loving eye sees through and beyond image and effects the deepest change (AC, p58)
Learning to love myself, is about how I see.
James Ballantyne 