Open your eyes

Last Sunday the Mission Board at our church gave the sermon. It had been planned for a long time. Four women volunteered and we divided up agencies that our church supports. The point was for each person to find a story and to inform the congregation of how their mission dollars serve local needs. For the children’s story, we decided to do a little skit. One mission board member got the children to help her set up a table labeled Ritter Center and she began to explain what the center did. That was my cue to come in as a client. As I walked down the aisle at church, I asked folks where I could get some help.

What was so very incredible was that I did very little to change my appearance. All I did was to put on an old coat of my husbands, a knitted cap that hid my hair and an old pair of glasses. That is all. And no one recognized me, at least not until I spoke. For all these years I’ve been standing up conspicuously in the front of the church and yet no one recognized me. At first I couldn’t understand and then it hit me, we really don’t see each other at all.

Brain scientists tell us our brains generalize, that we don’t really see what is before us. We see a minister in a robe up in front of the church or a homeless person on the corner. We see a politician or a woman with a head scarf and with the initial identification of our brain comes a surge of unconscious judgments. Good minister, scary homeless person, untrustworthy politician, foreign terrorist. To label and box up anyone is a terrible loss, yet that is what our brains do. Each of us is so much more than just one thing. I don’t tell you this to judge the good people of church but to raise up in your mind the awareness of how we all do this all the time. The only hope is to recognize what our brains do automatically for us and then to take a second deeper look at each other. Each of us is a child of God, uniquely created, with our own unique experiences. What wonders are right here before our eyes and yet most of us miss them without even knowing that we do.

Open your eyes. Become conscious!