Hidden In Plain Sight

Accordion to scientific studies, 90% of people do not realize I replaced the beginning of this sentence with an instrument.  Fascinating, don’t you think?  Had you not noticed or did you stumble over the ‘accordion’?  It is right there, in plain sight.  What is it about our tendency not to see what’s right there under our nose, so to say?  While driving to work this morning I noticed a splash of colour - a jogger in blue shorts and a bright red T-shirt.  Nothing unusual about that, you might say.  Well, yes it was. A mere 24 hours earlier the temperatures here in London, Ontario, sat at around -15oC.  This morning they soared to a balmy 8oC. The jogger I admired had donned his running togs and embraced the day with joie de vivre, whereas those with whom he shared the sidewalk were bundled up in subdued colours.  It reminded me of the saying, ‘Two men looked out from prison bars; one saw mud, the other stars.’ 

So how do we daily learn to see what’s hiding in plain sight?  Spotting a chameleon with its incredible penchant for camouflage can be near impossible.  Carefully watching a magician, whose tantalizing skills at illusions mesmerize us, can also truly test our powers of observation.  And the list goes on.  Then there are the obvious everyday ‘miracles’ that can easily elude our observation.  One I find most fascinating is the force of gravity.  It, too, is literally right under our noses. Though we do not see it, we intimately know its magnetic power to pull whatever we drop downwards.  And it keeps us grounded.

Which brings me to the enigma of God’s grace.  What is it?  The quirky spiritual writer Anne Lamott admits: “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. It can be received gladly or grudgingly, in big gulps or in tiny tastes, like a deer at the salt” (Travelling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith).  Grace is God’s magnetic ‘force of gravity’ gently pulling us towards God.  Grace is all around us, albeit hidden in plain sight.  As Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians, “now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1Cor. 13:12).  Maybe the challenge for us who ‘see dimly’ isn’t to see with our eyes, but to see with the eyes of the heart.  If we see as ‘in a mirror dimly’ this isn’t because God hides.  God is ‘hidden in plain sight’ in the very fabric of our lives and in all of creation.  God does not hide. God is there in plain sight, if only we would see.

Sr. Magdalena Vogt, CPS