Vision

So, due to the stupid retinal detachment in my right eye, I have been thinking a lot about sight/vision. I didn't realize how much I depend on my eyes for daily life ... I have all this spare time on my hands because I'm not working, but I can't even read. Dumb. As I type right now, I am having to focus really hard to make sure that I am not misspelling every other word. Sorry if I am :)
The most frustrating part is my total lack of depth perception ... with only one good eye, its been hard to even pick up my coffee without spilling it. And that made me think about something that one my favorite professors insightfully noted about Sauron's manifestation as a single eye in "The Lord of the Rings"(ya, I'm a dork) -- because Sauron was a single eye, he couldn't percieve the depth of what Frodo and the fellowship were trying to do in destroying the ring. It seems to me that, in the same way, Satan lacks the depth perception that would be necessary to truly thwart good. For example, he totally missed what Christ would accomplish on the cross ... when it seemed like a victory for evil on the surface, it was actually the greatest victory for good. Just a thought.
And, as any good teacher would do, my professor recycled that lesson in an essay he wrote entitled "The Triumph of the Eye", where he lays to waste our cultural preference for that which can be seen with the eye. He starts the essay with a reference to Screwtape letters, where the demons are discussing the way in which they have made the role of the eye more and more important, while making its demands all the more impossible to meet. Specifically, they are talking about women and the cultural importance of our appearance, including the increasingly impossble standard of beauty. The question that introduces the essay is "how can we reshape imagination to prefer spiritual vision to mere sight?" -- this seems to be a pretty imporant question that rarely gets asked so directly. It is increasingly becoming my prayer that I would have real depth of wisdom and vision, and that the tyrrany of the visual would dissapte. Dr. Wood decides that once we can look through the eye instead of with the eye, we will truly behold femine beauty. He says "it is a beauty of found in the voice of wisdom and companionship rather than the shape of the hourglass. It is an autumnal beauty often located in young women imbued with moral seriousness ... it is creased with both love and sorrow." How beautiful is that image? The phrase "autumnal beauty" has haunted me since I read this essay a month ago ... I ache to be beautiful in that way, and to see it rightly in other people!
And I think the importance of depth of vision goes far beyond the issue of feminine beauty ... so I am going to have to keep unpacking it. That is all the mental ramblings I have for now :)