This post was written by Ted Lyddon Hatten

From the corner of my eye,
I caught a glimpse of the Holy.
When I turned my head I saw
nothing.

The frozen cornfield in northwest Missouri was a good place to view the night sky, according to the TA of my college astronomy class. With exacting coordinates, my telescope was trained on a cluster of cosmic dust thousands of light-years from where I stood.

“You should see a nebula in your eyepiece, I was told. It will look like a smudge of light.”

Should see, I said under my breath, because every time I looked, I saw nothing but empty sky. The TA looked through my viewfinder, smiled, and said, Look again.

Thirty years later I see the wisdom of her pedagogy. Look. And then, look again.

There are, of course, many different ways to look. And how one looks determines what one sees. A zoologist and a creationist do not see the same. Your doctor and your lover look at you in different ways. As a result, they see different things.

Lectio divina (holy reading) is a contemplative way of looking at a sacred text. The process is less about scrutiny (the purview of exegesis) and more about presence (sitting with the language and images of a passage). Holy reading shares the same posture of openness to discovery that is found in an academic approach, however, the energy required is focused in a different way. The intense gaze of sound scholarship is vital to the development of a mature faith, but there are other ways of looking that lead to different truths.

Visio Divina (holy seeing) is a contemplative way of seeing that is often used in conjunction with its more its widely known sibling, lectio divina. But visio divina need not be limited to scripture. Holy seeing can help us see the Holy in the world around us at this very moment. Some of us seem to have a knack for spotting the presence of the Divine. Others of us exert considerable energy and intense concentration in the search but see nothing. We are, in many ways, blind to our blindness.

The difficulty I had in seeing the nebula in my viewfinder had nothing to do with astronomy. Biology was to blame.

The human eye has two types of light-gathering cells. Cones pick up color but are useless in dim light. Rods are blind to color because they specialize in light/shadow. My retina, like yours, is covered with a mixture of rods and cones, but the center of the eye is packed exclusively with cones. Rods, responsible for peripheral vision, are found on the periphery of the retina. I could not see the nebula, a smudge of light, because I was looking with the part of my eye that only sees color. When I looked to the left (about 10°) using my peripheral vision, the nebula blossomed before my eyes.

I suspect the TA smiled as she walked away because she knew I was about to experience something astronomers have known for thousands of years. It is called averted vision. The intense center of our gaze sees much of the world, but not all of it. Averting your gaze slightly allows another part of your eye to take in what it can see. In this case, it meant I could see the beautiful shades of light and dark of a nebula.

Metaphorically speaking, visio divina is like averted vision. It allows another part of our being the opportunity to search for (and occasionally find) the Divine in the margins of your field of vision. If scripture is to be believed, the Holy is inclined to seek the company of those on the periphery of power and privilege.

If it you want to see God, look. And then, look again.

From the corner of my eye,
I caught a glimpse of the Holy.

Text and Images © Ted Lyddon Hatten

Ted Lyddon Hatten is hierophant in residence at the Wesley House, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. He is an artist, theologian, educator, pastor, father, and life-partner. And, a United Methodist by birth and by choice. He works in a variety of media but is particularly fond of beeswax.