What's seen and unseen

I love getting new glasses. It's about far more than selecting another pair of frames (though I do enjoy that a lot too). No, the real thrill comes when I pick them up and put them on for the first time. The world immediately snaps into perfect focus and comes alive; suddenly I see all I've been missing and it feels almost magical.

But even with my glasses on, am I seeing clearly? Completely? Can I? Even a person with perfect vision can find their life is revolutionized by looking through a microscope or a telescope. Hidden worlds revealed. Worlds, lives, energy, form, and matter that are there all the time become visible.

I recently read the book Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic  by Martha Beck, a Harvard-educated academic whose life is turned upside down and inside out when in the midst of working on her Ph.D., she becomes unexpectedly pregnant. From the moment of conception, she has a distinct and growing sense of the presence of other beings of some sort or another--angels? spirits? helpers? She doesn't attempt to categorize them because she has so much difficulty rationally acknowledging them and the inexplicable things occurring all around her. She knew she'd sound crazy if she talked about out of body experiences, premonitions and foresight, dreams that are more like visions, and the palpable presence of Others. She was at Harvard where being or sounding crazy was completely unacceptable. She was a pregnant Ph.D student focusing on gender studies and the fact that she was married AND reproducing was considered more than a little inappropriate.

Hypercompetitive, she had pushed hard to get where she was. She had a very concrete sense of how the world worked, what success looked like, and how to get ahead. And then she got pregnant, became extremely ill, and discovered that the child she was carrying had Down Syndrome. She was only 25 and not only was her world unraveling but this Other World was opening up to her and she had no idea what it all meant.

I appreciated her humor in conveying both the desperation and grace of that year in her life. I was relieved she didn't turn her metaphysical, unexplainable experiences into a religious treatise and instead observed and reported them and let the reader decide or imagine what was going on. Expecting Adam is a book full of wonder. It's inspirational not because the author is trying to Inspire You but because she's being honest and risking ridicule by sharing something so far beyond the realm of what most of us will ever encounter or acknowledge publicly. I came away from her story reminded of the importance of keeping eyes, mind, and spirit open to what lies beyond our ordinary experiences.

I once again pondered the idea that Plato first put forth millennia ago, that what we see and experience in this world is merely an imperfect reflection of another, truer world. We are in a cave observing shadows and thinking the shadows are the Thing Itself. That idea was reiterated by the Apostle Paul who said in this world, we "see through a glass, darkly" and one day we will see "face to face." In many spiritual practices of all kinds there is an understanding that a veil exists between this world and another. In Ireland, there are places where it's reported the "veil is thin" and people can have extraordinary experiences. Some mystics see mirrors as potential portals between worlds.

Whatever your mindset or beliefs, I think it is far too easy to move through life without seeing. We are like cameras on auto focus. Often our inner lens focuses on something in the distance when the real subject of interest is Right in Front of Us. Or sometimes we're so absorbed with the foreground, we miss the beauty and importance of what's going on in the background. Plus cameras can only record what the light reflects; when there's not enough light, there's no picture or we see "darkly."

It's too easy to focus on the wrong things in every aspect of our lives, to forget how imperfect our vision is, and fail to consider the wonder, weight and importance of Things Unseen.

Have any of you read Expecting Adam? Thoughts on the subject of a veil between worlds, things seen vs unseen?

Copyright 2012 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. Do not cut, copy, paste, or steal.

Comments

[Amber]

I love this post... Very thoughtful. I like Martha Beck, and would read this.

;)

[Joyce Ellen Davis]

Love the book! Having had a few "thin-veil" experiences of my own, I resonate fully with Martha's experience with Adam. We both came from a tradition of "strange and beautiful stories of angels at the bedside, holy books buried in the American hillsides, and seagulls swooping down from the Utah skies to eat up plagues of crickets." The quote is from The Book of Mormon Girl by Joanna Brooks. (Another great book, btw) Joanna speaks of coming into this world :"an ancient spirit striving to remember the shape of eternity at the kitchen table, in a house where ancestors knew my name, and stepped through the walls, my
dreams filled with light, my head consecrated with oil, every Sunday morning white bread and tap water for sacrament, every evening the taste of a ripe glazed strawberry saying 'grateful' on my tongue."

I love Martha Beck's writing, too, love her humor and insight. I have my own copy of Expecting Adam on my bookshelf, and I, too, believe that the veil in thin.... Also, I would recommend that you read the poem I stole from Rethabile and posted on my FB this morning about Mirrors! :D

[V-Grrrl]

Joyce,

Wow, that's some evocative writing from Joanna Brooks. I'll have to check her out.

This was my first book from Martha Beck, though I've read her magazine articles before.