Finally able to see

To watch, to wait, to keep the heart pure, the eye single.

To be two-hearted is against nature, yet we change ourselves, yielding to forces outside us, through fear at first, and then to triumph over others, we duplicate our heart, we become duplicitous.

To be two-eyed is according to nature, yet we are commanded to have a single eye, so that our bodies may be full of light. ‘If your eye offends thee, pluck it out, and throw it away…’ Our choice is before us.

So we find ourselves, when we awake, to have been sleeping on a battlefield, we know not how long, and we resent this. ‘Why me?’ asks every soul, as it reads the God-etched commandments in the flesh.

So the Church father (we forget his name) says, ‘Man is commanded to become God,’ and we remember that he spoke this at a funeral oration of another ancient ‘great.’ But it is our own funeral that matters to us.

By nature thus, contrary to nature thus. We yearn to transcend the chaos of our lives, yet dig ourselves deeper in that chaos as we multiply our hearts and refuse to put out one eye, that which consumes all.

Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us whom You have made, and bring us back to where we began, our hearts one in Your heart, and seeing You with a single eye, finally able to see.