Learning to See

Learning to See

To what extent can spirituality be understood as a kind of optics, a way of seeing? The Christian tradition has long been concerned with this question. In the Fourth Gospel, the language of seeing frames what it means to come to faith (as the language of blindness or dwelling in darkness frames the meaning of sin). In the ancient monastic tradition, learning to see meant becoming adept at discernment of spirits, developing the ability to distinguish subtle but often crucial differences in the shape and texture of reality. Prayer and the deeper reaches of religious experience were often understood as ways of seeing, and being seen.

Augustine or Hippo gives vivid and memorable expression to this in Book VII of the Confessions: "I entered into my innermost citadel . . . and with my soul's eye, such as it was, saw above that same eye of my soul the immutable light higher than my mind—not the light of every day, obvious to anyone, nor a larger version of the same kind which would, as it were have given out a much brighter light and filled everything with its magnitude . . . It transcended my mind." Here is a kind of seeing that simultaneously undermines all earlier understandings of what it meant to see and brings one to the threshold of being able to see more deeply into the heart of reality. Such was Thomas Merton's experience the day he stood at the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville. Years of monastic seclusion, of chosen disengagement from his fellow human beings, unexpectedly and mysteriously yielded something new: "I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness." Incorporation, learning to see oneself as part of a body, a community, seems to require such openness; that, and a relinquishment of hard moral boundaries in favor of something softer and more forgiving.

Still, there is a kind of seeing that requires withdrawal and separation, perhaps not as a permanent condition, but at least for a time—as a precondition for a certain kind of seeing and knowing. Bernard McGinn considers the paradoxical tension between withdrawal and return that runs throughout the Christian monastic tradition, asking in particular how Antony of Egypt, Hildegard of Bingen, and Thomas Merton negotiated this paradox. Is there an optimal balance that governs how one is to move between the gesture of withdrawal that leads one to break with conventional social ties and the gesture of return or reengagement through which one "reenters" the world? Must withdrawal be seen simply as a strategy for achieving a certain end? Or can the move to withdraw be understood as an end in itself, an act that has the capacity to open up generative, creative space within the one who enters the place of solitude? Is learning to see clearly and deeply reason enough for a person to withdraw?

Philip Richter's essay on Thomas Merton's photography pushes these questions in another direction, asking about the ethics of seeing, especially the ethical meaning of the photographer's gaze. Severe critiques have been leveled at photography as an art form, especially its tendency to objectify and exploit its subjects. Thomas Merton took up photography relatively late in his life, and it became an integral part of his contemplative practice. But, given the inherent limitations in photography, is it in fact compatible with contemplative practice? Or does it undermine the capacity for simple seeing that is at the heart of true contemplative practice? Left unanswered is the even more disturbing question: does any attempt to see another run the risk of objectification and exploitation?

This is a real question, one that...