2 ways of looking

for some reason, looking at jonny's post on emerging church reminded me of something i wrote a couple of years ago whilst on personal retreat at the beach. i pasted it below:

Have just spent the last couple of hours (I think) sitting by the window with the curtains open, all the lights out, and with classical music on the radio in the background. It’s a beautiful, clear night. I experienced a wonderful sense of the stars ‘showing’ themselves at the beginning of that time as my night vision came into play. I was thinking about my ignorance of astronomy and wished I could identify the constellations. And its amazing how many aeroplanes there are in the sky!

I found myself a little saddened in a way to think of the beautiful night sky. They’re same stars the psalmist would have looked at, and now the view is now somewhat different due to the presence of metal, lights, humans, and fumes.

As I watched the stars and looked into the blackness of the sky between the stars, I noticed how I could see the stars better out of the corner of my eye – by looking at them ‘obliquely’, so to speak. Of course, this is nothing new. In fact, I was looking at the flashing lights of a beacon on the horizon in the same way earlier on. It’s a technique used in navigation when trying to count the flashes if they’re difficult to see. Its easier to see and count the flashes if you look slightly away from the beacon, rather than looking directly at it.

Two minor thoughts arose from this observation. Firstly, that looking obliquely at something can sometimes give a better view. This could be a clue as to how to start thinking ‘outside of the box’. Most people (me included) find it very difficult, if not impossible to see what we are looking at any differently from how we have always seen it.

But rather than looking at it (whatever it is) directly, perhaps we can try looking at it obliquely, out of the corner of our eyes and see if we notice it in a different way. This could be helpful if the object of observation is the church. How can we look at church in a different way? Try looking at it obliquely.

Secondly, the opposite of what I’ve just said. Try looking at something very intently. I remember doing this on several occasions in the bush in Australia. Usually sitting at a vantage point, like the top of a gully, I would look intently at the bush at the other side of the gully. It was interesting to observe the transformation of what, with a cursory glance was an almost 2 dimensional image become a very deep 3 dimensional reality with an intense ‘looking’. Again, perhaps we could revitalise the church by looking intently right into it.

Tags: oblique, church, re-imagine, looking