Today is the feast of Saint Herve, patron of the blind within the Catholic and Orthodox Christian traditions. A sixth century Breton bard who became a hermit, he was born blind. He was apparently a particularly eloquent preacher. The story goes that when a wolf killed his ox the saint’s rebuke so shamed the wolf that it asked to replace the ox, and did.
Thoughts on this subject seem to tumble out of me…
First, that phrase “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” It’s an ancient English expression cited by Jonathan Swift and others. I’m sure it’s origin is in that line from Jeremiah. In the King James version: “Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not.”
Ain’t it the truth?
But also, there’s a sense where blindness is used in Buddhism and Taoism where this disability is seen, if you will, as a pointer to a deeper stance to life.
Not as disability but as a way to liberation. It has to do with the position of not-knowing.
When we surrender our certainties, when we accept how we don’t see, how we really, really don’t see; then the gates of genuine freedom are thrown open, our blinders are thrown off.
And at that moment the world is encountered with new eyes.
And, and this is that precious moment which allows us to make our way with considerably more grace than before.
It makes me think of the Perkins School for the Blind and their wonderful motto, “All we see is possibility.”
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