At First Sight

by Bob Freye

 
They heard him approach, felt the air as the hand stretched out toward their faces, felt the touch of weathered fingers, soft against their eyes. They did not see it coming. But they watched the hand as it drew back.

Their eyes focused in an instant on the shapes around them. The crowd jostled and swayed as those in back tried to peer over those in front to see what he was doing. The man, weary and plain, standing there in front of them, waiting for them to realize what he had given them.

“Did it work?” someone asked, and the question echoed through the crowd.

“Did it work?”

“Can they see?”

“Well?” the man said. “What do you see?”

The two blind men looked at each other.

“You go first,” the one said.

“I was going to say that,” the other replied. “But if you want, I can start.”

The one nodded, and the other began.

“I was going to say that I see the frailty of humanity, such as we are. I mean, if a person’s eyesight can so quickly be taken away, then how many other elements of our existence are simply new failures that can cripple us at any moment?”

“Just what I was thinking,” the one said.

“So if we are such frail creatures,” the other continued, “then why would we bother to boast to loudly about our qualities, if they can all be taken away in a moment? I mean, suppose I am good one day at speaking.”

“And you are,” the one said.

“Well, what good is it,” the other went on, “if the next day my voice malfunctioned, and I was unable to speak a word? Does that fundamentally change who I am, or to put it another way, does it fundamentally change the value of who I am?”

The crowd stood frozen between breathing in and breathing out.

A voice from the back called out, “Do you see colors?”

“Indeed I do,” the other said, “with a clarity I have never before known. But even more than that, I see the futility of pursuing such senseless things as power and position, of riches and glory, when there must be something much more lasting, and thus more worthy of our time.”

“Well said!” the one next to him commented, nodding his head in affirmation. “You see things so deeply! I am ashamed to tell you my own meager observations.”

The crowd gawked at the men.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” someone asked.

“How many fingers indeed,” the other said. “At your best, how many fingers could you possibly hold up? Five? Ten? Could you manage twenty fingers all by yourself, or are you too limited for that?”

“And what can those fingers accomplish?” the one asked. “Can they heal with a touch? No, only one person can do that.

He looked at the plain man who stood flanked by his disciples in the road, having stopped for this one errand.

“You asked what I see.” The one who was once blind drew himself up to his full height and surveyed the crowd. “I see cloth purses hung on belts of leather, all waiting to wear thin and tear, releasing their treasures to fall to the ground and disappear in the dust.”

He took a step toward the crowd, who pulled back as one collective animal.

“I see reputations that hang on the flimsiest lie, dreams that are nearly rusted through, fantasies that are already a vapor and need only a light breeze to blow them away.”

“Oh, well said!” The other applauded. “I especially like the line about the reputations.”

“Well, I see that now.”

“They hang on the flimsiest lie,” the other repeated, adding his own dramatic overtones to the words.   

“Why didn’t I see that before?” the one asked, speaking mostly to himself.

“There is seeing, and there is seeing,” the other declared.

“I’m just saying that my eyes never worked this well before,” the one said.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man turn and head down the road, with his disciples around him. The crowd shifted as people began to move away from Jericho, away from the most recent miracle, toward wherever the man was going.  

“I see something else,” the other said. “We have nothing here.”

“Yes,” the one agreed.

And they turned and followed after Jesus.

 
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A last word:

In Matthew 20:29-34, two blind men call out to Jesus for help and receive their sight in return. Do you wonder what they saw? They could have run off and explored the new colors and shapes that their eyes could now recognize. But they didn’t. Maybe they knew that even the things we see around us are only temporary.

  
[-] © 2007 by Bob Freye