The eye through which I see God…

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”
― Meister Eckhart, Sermons of Meister Eckhart

This is so profound and really quite simple if you think about it.  If I think about it.  I read today that when Christ walked the earth he was such a good man that even the “rabble” of society were attracted to him.  But he didn’t see them as such.  He always found the goodness within them.  That is what he drew out of them, and as a result, that is what grew.  Back in my teacher days a chief underpinning of best practices was to expect your students to do well, and they would rise to meet your expectations. Most did.  And, because I last worked in an elementary school where so many of my students were battle weary from the harsh environments they were surviving within, they were often full of fear.  Current events in the world did not help matters.  9-11, hurricanes in Haiti,  the world was a mean place within the home and without.  But over the course of a marking period I would begin to build relationships with them.  By focusing on kindnesses the students could show to each other, we began to build a community that was safe, and for many…even loving.  We began to look for examples of goodness in the world.  This underprivileged school where 95% of the students qualified for a free lunch conducted penny drives for Haiti, food and clothing drives for the homeless at the winter holidays.  We celebrated every holiday and all our differences.  We learned of Diwali and its message of bringing light to the world.  These children began to have light in their eyes.  We talked of the horrors of 9-11, something many adults had failed to allow the children to talk about so that they could have clarification and have their questions answered.  And, we talked about how it took only a few men to destroy the twin towers and bring so much pain to so many people.  But, as I began to question the children about what else they had seen in the media or heard discussed by the adults in their lives, a different picture of that tragedy began to emerge for them.  It was a picture so many people with hearts that shared the pain of what had occurred on that day and who wanted to help, in any way that they could.  Hundreds, thousands of people flooded into New York City to help dig through the rubble in the hopes of saving one more life.  People who showed up to cook for those workers.  Firemen, policemen, emts, doctors, nurses, regular people who just wanted to help.  And so in the end we drew a picture on the board of how many people created evil and destruction that day.  And on the other side were listed  childish guesses at the numbers in each of the helper categories we had named.  It was clear to see that there are very many more good people in the world who care about each other than “bad” people who don’t.  If you have eyes to see.