June 20, 2023
Love at First Sight
By Amba Gale
“Gratitude makes optimism sustainable.”
–Michael J. Fox
“Love at first sight” has been an old cliché I have lived with through my many years on the planet, yet, when I think about it, if I can transport myself there, to first sight, I bring myself to love, the love that is fully available, waiting for me, just on the other side of letting go of everything that I already know.
I’ve noticed, though that we human beings generally don’t live from first sight.
Rather we “see through a glass” – a mirror – “darkly,” with obscured vision, borne of our past, of judgements we have made, opinions that we have, assessments that we listen through, conclusions we have drawn, stories we have lived with. This ongoing repetitious nature of the way we live obscures our sight.
Like the woman who thought her neighbor doesn’t know how to wash clothes as she looked out her window every morning to see the clothes on the line still dirty, her lack of perceiving what was REALLY going on, that the very window out of which she looked was dirty, we, too, look at the world, not out of the eyes of first sight, but out of expectations, beliefs, demands, and requirements. We require of the world that things should be EXACTLY as we want them to be, according to the pictures in our head. And, when they are not (which is most of the time), rather than unfolding life from there, listening for the gift within the thorns, well, we argue and complain with reality. All of us do this.
We forget to remember who we are.
We live numb lives, neither fully experiencing our joys, nor our griefs – but somewhere in an in between state of semi wakefulness, where the wonders of this world cannot be seen.
We could see everything as a gift. We could bring gratefulness and first sight to our lives.
“First sight is the moment of God-sight, heart-sight, soul-sight. It is the seeing of revelation, the feeling of oneness that briefly overcomes us when nothing remains in the way,” says Father Richard Rohr.
And, he says, “at first sight we find love; at our first true seeing, the love that is already there touches us.”
One morning, recently, as I was looking out my window on to the very land upon which we built our home, this poem came to me.
I think I was touched by love – at first sight – at the time.
Filled with First Sight
By Amba Gale
Wonder-fullness
fills my first sight,
I open my eyes to this day.
The sun laughs joyfully
over my shoulder, playing with the sea
as it dances.
The ice on our deck laughs
as it melts in the light.
First sight.
The sweet scent of incense
infuses my senses.
Bright, bright morning,
Filled with play, I enter my day.
First sight, and a sacred sense
that all is right,
Filled with First Sight
Yes!
Yes!
Yes!
