“It is the vision of far off things
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seen for the silence they hold.”
– David Whyte
In an iconic scene from the Hebrew Bible, Moses approaches a mysterious burning thorn-bush, and hears the voice of God command him to remove his sandals, telling him he is entering ‘holy ground.’ Here, Moses learns his life purpose is to free his people from slavery. Throughout the scene, he resists the message and covers his eyes, too frightened to look directly at God. In The Opening of Eyes, David Whyte invokes this image to demonstrate a revelatory moment of clear-eyed seeing: that the sacred is not a celestial being, not a somewhere else, or a sometime else. The experience of holiness is, in fact, the ground that is under our feet, our direct experience right now.
Posted by Guest Editor Sam Shapiro
The Opening of Eyes
That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.
David Whyte
From: Essentials
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