Standing at this wall, looking intently, seeing what these eyes easily recognize, this becomes a moment to pause. If I pause when I notice a part of my world I have often seen, I sometimes encounter something that has escaped me before, something small or large, important or not, but a new element in a comfortable old scene. That is the gift of pausing and noticing, the gift of new sight.
Does it matter? Not by itself, perhaps. But there may be a lesson here.
I take a chance if I spend time with the familiar – the old, comfortable, the “no surprises” – and move beyond what sits so readily in my frame of reference. The chance is the possibility for blessing in that very moment of moving beyond familiarity. It brings my awareness fully to where I am. And, if I am attentive, I can learn a new gentleness within my own experience as I gain the ability to see what is new in the familiar.
We can discover the familiar.
So we can decide to practice looking at what we have seen in hopes of seeing what has been unseen. Look up, look down – try what you haven’t tried yet, or try it again upside down or backwards and dancing. The texture or the color or the weave may be familiar, yet the composition, the mix of elements, the intonations may be new, not yet experienced, sacred.
We can practice continuing to look when we might dismiss what is in front of us and move hastily in search of some distant yearning. And as we practice we might notice how easy it is to find that new vision already embedded within the old.
Blessings,
Marco
