Focus

May 14, 2000

"In a dark time, the eye begins to see." Theodore Roethke

You may never have noticed, but I am legally blind in one eye. I suffer from what is technically known as amblyopia: an ailment more commonly known as a "lazy eye." As a consequence of my amblyopia, I am totally unable to read with my left eye. It refuses to focus. It wanders where it will. My left-eyed reality is perpetually blurred.

As a young child I was given patches to wear over my good, right eye, in the hope that the affected eye would strengthen to normality, but it was not to be. The patches were soon abandoned, and I went on my merry way, feeling no regret.

I have learned to get along quite well with only one eye, thank you very much. In fact, having never been able to see with two--binoculars are superfluous for me, and I could never get a stereopticon to work--I can't say that I have missed much,--at least not in a literal, visual sense.

Fortunately, I do have good peripheral vision, which is better than being completely blind, but as I have grown older I have found that my depth perception has begun to fail. I noticed this first when throwing and catching a baseball with my son, Ben. I don't do that much any more. My loss of depth perception has also caused some problems with my driving--at least that's my excuse, and I'm sticking with it. My night vision is not particularly good, and I am more prone to eye fatigue when I am driving than I used to be.

I wish that I could say that like blind Tiresias of Thebes, I am wiser for my handicap, but alas I am not. Stricken by blindness in youth, Tiresias was given the power of prophecy, and a staff to guide his steps. "What life, so maim'd by night, were worth/ Our living out?" asks Tennyson, in his poem "Tiresias." The answer, I suppose, is any life, and every life, though I can't prove it.

After all, how many of us can really see? The greatest artists prove by a few brush strokes or chisel marks that most of us don't. Compared to Rembrandt or Turner, I'm blind as a bat. For most of us, I venture to say, our view of reality is blurred, not unlike the vision in my left eye. We don't take the time to look very carefully, to really see what we see, and we don't really focus on it when we do.

And so it was good to read in a friend's church newsletter of the late DeCoursey Fales, Jr., who died recently in Cambridge. Mr. Fales was summarized in his Boston Globe obituary as a "Scholar who focused on a single vase." Wow. Mr. Fales, who was an archeologist and historian, devoted almost his entire life to studying a single Greek vase.

The Globe reported that the vase, called the Francois Vase, is the most important Athenian black-figured vase that has survived from the 6th century BC. Now in Florence, Italy, the vase is painted with mythological scenes and about 200 figures, among them the legendary warriors Achilles and Ajax of the of the Trojan War. "To be sure," writes my friend, "the Francois Vase is no ordinary pot. Yet I am struck by Mr. Fales' concentration. For a lifetime, he did one thing well."

What are we to make of Mr. Fales' focus on a single object, his lifetime of doing one thing well? In a world where we are bombarded by thousands of images a day, or sometimes even a minute, I must admit that I find it striking and admirable. Most days, I despair of doing one thing well for even a moment, let alone a lifetime. Certainly, such focus has a religious quality about it. It reminds me of the dedication of the medieval monks to their magnificently illuminated manuscripts, of the Tibetan Buddhist monks to their ephemeral sand mandalas, and of the Muslims to their intricate mosaics. It reminds me of the Desert Fathers of the early Christian Church, straining nakedly toward a vision of God in their caves, or of the great mystics, lost in their dark nights of the soul, yearning for the brilliant light of union with the Divine. Focus, it seems to me, is a huge part of the religious life. It is the object of all meditation, of every contemplative prayer, even of each paradoxical Zen Koan. If God was the inspiration for the towering Gothic cathedrals, focus was what got them built. And to get us, finally, to focus was the purpose of the simple but difficult parables of Jesus.

Our own religious ancestor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, knew the importance of focus when he wrote in a famous passage, that while observing the lessons of nature, he had become "a transparent eyeball," an experience that made him "part and particle of God." So much of what religion across the great traditions teaches is the importance of sight and, more significantly, of insight: the ability to focus on what is truly important and to leave all the distractions behind. We are all blind, but, we are assured by the old hymn, we can all come to see. Indeed, as poet Theodore Roethke reminds us, it is "in a dark time" that we sometimes learn how to see. How many of us, in this fragmented and fragmentary world, yearn for some focus in our scattered lives?

Unlike Mr. Fales, most of us never find an object to hold our attention for a lifetime. I know that I, for one, have often envied the ability that I see in others to concentrate on one thing at a time, to truly focus on and be present to and excel in whatever task they are engaged in. It is focus which characterizes the great athletes and artists and even the prophets--the ability see straight and to do one thing well.

The Buddhists call this attribute "mindfulness," absolute attention to the task at hand, and I have had to admit that I am more often afflicted by mindlessness than graced by mindfulness. I am hopelessly eclectic. Yet, I yearn for focus.

This being Mother's Day, I offer as a regret my own inability to focus on my children in their growing-up years to the extent that I wish I could have. When our children are small, we are often distracted by a million things which later turn out to have been vastly unimportant compared to sharing in the lives of our children. It is only in hindsight and retrospect that I have come to regret my inability to give them all of the attention that they deserved. People told me to enjoy those years, for they would pass all too quickly, but I couldn't really hear them. Now I know that it is true.

There are far worse things in this world than to focus our all on our children, to be the best mother or father that we can possibly be.
I admire those who do it well, and I regret that we live in a world where worldly success and material gain is too often placed above the importance of nurturing our children into a healthy adulthood. For as the ancients said, with truth, fame and fortune is fleeting. Love, on the other hand, is worth our all. And to care properly for a child is to plant for a lifetime.

Of course, it is not too late to learn how to focus. If it were, there would be no sense in my preaching this sermon! And clearly, focus has its dark side, which we know all too well as obsession and fanaticism. But leaving that aside, let us consider the case of Mr. Fales and his vase. What are some of the other lessons we might glean from his example?

1) Obviously, there is always more than meets the eye. Imagine a single vase holding interest enough for a lifetime. How many objects in our daily lives do we really take the time to see? How many people do we really get to know deeply? In a time when relationships often grow stale after only a few years, we might take to heart the wisdom of a couple of centenarians I recently heard about, who have been married for eighty years. Asked for the secret to their longevity, the man said, "She put up with me," said the husband, "so I guess I had to put up with her." What might we learn about each other in eighty years, in one year, if we really took the time to see?

2) In life, it is OK to do one thing well, in fact, it is better to do one thing well than to do lots of things poorly. How will the Globe summarize your life? Remember, you only get one line: "Minister who preached obscure sermons." What would be so bad about "Mother who brought child into the world" or "Father who loved his son"? "Man who memorized poetry while commuting." "Woman who planted flowers." "Man who was kind," wouldn't be bad, either. Who's to say, "Man who pumped septic tanks" might not be bad, if he really did it well. You don't have to be an expert in ancient Greek pottery to focus.

In fact, expertise can sometimes blind us to the kind of focus I am talking about. God knows that there are too many so-called experts among us these days. I'm thinking of focus more as a labor of love, something to which we dedicate our lives that gives them meaning, and allows us to focus on what is really important.

I suspect that Mr. Fales could not have focused his entire life on one object, no matter how interesting or beautiful, if it had not given him pleasure. Indeed, I suspect that the Francois Vase not only gave him great pleasure, but that it must have led him beyond itself, to what is ultimately important. Perhaps it led him to God. I like to think that it did.

William Blake gets at the kind of attention we need to have in his little poem:

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

That, it seems to me, is what focus is all about. It is about the more than meets the eye. It is about seeing, even in a dark time. Tiresias could see the future, even though he was blind. Helen Keller said that far worse than blindness was to be "without vision."
Most of us, even those of us who have 20/20 vision, are blind.

As I have grown older, being blind in one eye has made me appreciate the vision that I do have. And it kind of makes for a nice metaphor for my life. Perhaps I appreciate the miracle of focusing a bit more than I would otherwise do.

I suspect that I will always be more of a generalist than a specialist. Some of that is laziness, as with my eye. But I can appreciate the necessity, even the beauty, of focusing one's life on a single goal or task. It's probably not for me, but I commend it to you as at least an occasional practice, or spiritual discipline.

As you go out from this place, try to pay a bit more attention to the things that meet your eye: the light reflected off the water, the face of your loved ones, all the sounds and sights and textures of a beautiful world. Know that this is it: that this is what you have been waiting for, if only you have eyes to see, and ears to hear, and lips to speak. And may God bless you in all your coming and going, from this day forth, world without end. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock