Lasik Surgery

Several years ago, after wearing glasses and contacts for most of my life, I decided to invest in Lasik surgery. Lasik surgery involves reshaping the cornea to focus light on the retina and improve vision. The first morning after the procedure, I was amazed—I awoke and could see perfectly. I didn’t have to reach for my glasses and would only need readers for things up close.

Recently, I’ve been undergoing another vision improvement process. The results have not been as immediate, but I think I’m starting to see more clearly.

Shortly after the elections last fall, disheartened by our current political climate and the vicious discourse in our media and culture, I started looking for a new way to navigate the existential crisis I was experiencing. How could I live with hope when it seemed like civil society was crumbling? The church teachings, seminary lessons, and spiritual practices I had relied on felt stale, and I wasn’t sure if the Church could survive the nationalistic movement it now faces. I needed a paradigm shift—a revisioning of faith. I needed spiritual Lasik surgery to refocus.

Path of Exploration

One night, restless and unable to sleep, I started researching the Wisdom tradition of the Western Church, a part of Christianity I knew a little about but tended to discount as strange. Spiritually, I start as a head type. I love rational thought and logical thinking. In contrast, the Wisdom tradition talks about inner seeing beyond rational thought and our physical senses—about perceiving reality and the Divine Mystery with the “eye of the heart.” 

What does that mean?

I kept reading. I knew enough about the Wisdom tradition and its practices to understand that it has sustained some of the greats in our history—Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, and Jesus. They all found strength, focus, and peace amid turmoil through Wisdom practices. In fact, Wisdom practices have anchored people for generations. I wanted to feel anchored. I decided to do a deep dive into the Wisdom tradition and learn as much as I could about this mystical branch of Christianity. 

Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, 

be all else to me, save that thou art; 

be thou my best thought in the day and the night, 

both waking and sleeping, thy presence my light. 

Be thou my wisdom, be thou my true word, 

be thou ever with me, and I with thee, Lord; 

be thou my great Mother, and I thy true child; 

be thou in me dwelling, and I with thee, one. 

This old hymn is packed with Wisdom tradition ideas—about God dwelling within and our being one or in union with God.

What is Wisdom tradition?

The Western Christian Wisdom tradition has been handed down to us primarily through monastic and contemplative communities. It involves spiritual practices and a process of awakening where you become more connected with and present to God. With spiritual practice, you begin seeing things in union with God and living within that union (a marriage of sorts with the Divine). 

This Wisdom process of awakening is not limited to one religious expression. We find it in Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, Christian, Muslim, Taoist, Indigenous, and other religions. They all involve similar paths of transformation shaped by love, surrender, and developing a deep, interior knowing or “unitive seeing.” 

Jesus was a master of Wisdom. His disciples called him their Wisdom teacher. Jesus taught in parables and Wisdom sayings about awakening and seeing God and the world with your heart. We don’t talk about this aspect of Jesus’ teachings—or how to go about this awakening—very often in the church."

Below is the revised text with punctuation, grammar, and flow improvements. I’ve also included a summary of the changes and the reasoning for them:

Why do we need Wisdom vision?

As the Apostle Paul wrote in the Ephesians text we heard, his prayer is that we come to know Jesus through the spirit of wisdom so that “the eyes of our hearts are enlightened, and we may share in Christ’s hope”—a hope that can anchor and sustain us as we address the complex challenges of our day.

With Wisdom vision, or unitive seeing, all of creation becomes important because it’s all part of God and each of us. Hence, we become more inclined to embrace our ecological responsibilities, love our neighbors, and respond to the needs of the physical world because it’s all interconnected. Wisdom vision helps us move beyond “us/them” attitudes toward a “we are all in this together” perspective.

Wisdom vision also helps us live in harmony with other faiths. Once we realize that we are grounded in shared Wisdom practices and insights, differences in religious beliefs don’t seem as important.

What are we trying to “see” with the heart according to Western Christian Wisdom?

Cynthia Bourgeault, a modern mystic, Episcopalian priest, and Wisdom teacher, has spent a lifetime studying the Wisdom branches of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and other religions. Here’s a general summary of how I understand Bourgeault’s explanation of what it means to see with your heart through Wisdom vision: 

• We exist in a physical or material realm, where we can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste things. This is the realm of science and rational thinking. 
• We also exist in a psychic or spiritual realm, where we experience what we can’t access with our five senses and make sense of through rational thinking—intuition, extrasensory awareness, creativity, awe, and God. From this realm, we sense energy from things like attention, will, prayer, and love—things that science doesn’t measure directly but that have real force. 
• As Bourgeault highlights, humans are conscious of both realms. While we are more familiar with the physical, even people who are not “spiritual” sense the energy that comes from the spiritual realm, even if they discount claims of intuition, a sixth sense, or divine presence. 

Wisdom vision is the ability to live in the physical world while being conscious of the spiritual and recognizing how everything is interconnected—unitive seeing. This takes practice in our modern world, where we emphasize rational thinking and intellect.

How do we develop our Wisdom vision?

Through spiritual practices like centering prayer, meditation, completing daily tasks with reverence, and engaging in acts of mercy, justice, compassion, and creativity with awareness of the divine energy fueling our actions. These practices help raise our consciousness to divine love and the spiritual realm, enabling us to grow beyond the limits of our rational minds and egos.

In January, my husband and I decided to experiment with Centering Prayer to see if we could develop our Wisdom vision. Centering Prayer involves sitting in silence for 20 minutes once or twice a day, letting go of thoughts, and returning to a place of no thinking. Often, moments of no thinking are brief before another thought arises. The practice of repeatedly letting go of thoughts and lovingly returning to the center of no thinking opens us to God’s direction. 

When we are controlled by our thoughts and egos, it’s difficult for the divine to speak into our lives. Interestingly, the goal of Centering Prayer is not to experience a revelation during the practice, but to become more open and available to God at other times.

I can honestly say the practice has changed us. It’s not like waking up the first day after Lasik surgery with completely clear vision. The change is more subtle. I’m less anxious and more hopeful. My husband says he’s more attuned to looking for God’s involvement in the world and feels a stronger relationship with God.

There’s a reason to develop Wisdom vision beyond mental well-being or a personal connection to God. Bourgeault believes we have a unique human role in the cosmos. As physical beings with spiritual awareness (or spiritual beings having a human experience), we are the bridge between the two realms. 

We are conduits who transmit divine love into the physical world. Every act of compassion, forgiveness, mercy, or justice—no matter how big or small—transmits energy. We are God’s hands and feet, making love a physical reality. Bourgeault describes it as food for the physical world. If humans don’t transmit that energy, the physical world becomes undernourished and can starve.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gives two commands as being the most important: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Putting these commands into Bourgeault’s framework: Summary of Our Role

- Develop your Wisdom vision to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. If you are a Star Wars fan, this is akin to Luke Skywalker learning to tap into the Force. 

- Use the Force seen with your Wisdom vision for good—love your neighbor and all of creation as yourself by feeding the physical realm with food from the spiritual realm: love, compassion, mercy, and justice. Each of us has a unique ability to do this, and we need to determine how best to offer that ability to the world.

Last summer, many in the Garden community read Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution by Rainn Wilson. Wilson believes contemporary culture is in desperate need of transformation. He calls for a spiritual revolution that brings meaning, purpose, heart-centered seeing, and collective awakening to the forefront of our cultural conversation. I agree. 

Wilson suggests, however, that we form a new religion everyone can get on board with. I disagree. We need shared values and principles, but we don’t have to throw all the babies out with the bathwater. Wisdom vision and the path of transformation common to most religions already provide vehicles for spiritual revolution. We can maintain our distinctiveness while uniting in collective awakening and improving our ability to see with our hearts. This is a revolution I want to be part of. 

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise: 

be thou mine inheritance now and always;

be thou and thou only the first in my heart; 

O Sovereign of heaven, my treasure thou art.

Today, we have an opportunity to become part of a spiritual revolution. My hope is that the Garden can become a catalyst for this revolution, fostering the kind of transformation the Wisdom tradition offers—a path for living and being in the world that has stood the test of time. Human survival and the healing of our world may depend on it.