I Take My Glasses Off To Wash

I knew a man on the Cumberland road who would not read a letter until he had walked it home.

Not because he could not read it in the yard. Because whatever was in it, he wanted to be sitting down and in his own kitchen when it landed. He had a way of arranging the conditions before he let a thing arrive.

I have thought about him often since a woman told me, in an ordinary conversation about nothing much, that she takes her glasses off before she goes to the bathroom sink at night.

She said it the way you would say you leave your boots by the door. A fact about the house. And then she stopped, because she heard it, and she said: I have been doing that since about 1998.

Twenty six years of arranging the conditions before a thing arrives.

Now hear me carefully, because I am not about to tell you to put the glasses on and take a long look. I am not going to do that at all, and there is a good reason for it further down.

But I want to name what the blur actually is, because a habit that old has usually stopped being a habit and become an agreement, and an agreement can be looked at.

Here is the shape of it. You cannot see the face well enough for the list to run. And you also cannot see the face well enough for anything else to happen either. Both are true, and only the first one gets counted as a benefit.

What the blur is buying

Take the blur seriously for a minute, because it works, and anything that has run for twenty six years is working at something.

It buys you two minutes without an inspection. That is real, and I am not going to sneer at it. A woman who has found a way to wash her face without a court session breaking out has solved something that a great many people have not solved.

But look at the price, because it is quiet and it is paid every night.

The blur does not distinguish. It cannot take the criticism out and leave everything else in. It takes the whole thing out. And what goes out with the list is every ordinary human piece of information a person gets from their own face: tiredness, a good week, whether you look like your father today, whether something is wrong that you would want to know about.

You are paying for two quiet minutes with all the information there is, and that blur has never once been able to remove only the part that hurts. The Holy Spirit is what shows a woman the price on a thing that has been running unpriced for years, and Mark 8 is where Scripture puts half sight in front of us and refuses to call it finished.

And here is the part that matters most.

The blur is not care. It is avoidance that has learned to look like care, which is the most convincing kind. It is the same water and the same hands and the same two minutes, and the intention underneath it is not tending. It is getting through.

You are able to tell the difference between soft light and no sight at all, and a blur has never once been the same thing as gentleness. It is written in Mark 8 that a man saw men as trees walking and was not left in that condition, and the Spirit of God is the one who moves a woman from getting through to giving care.

Men as trees, walking

There is a healing in Mark that people find strange, and I think it is the most useful one in the book for what we are talking about.

And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. (Mark 8:24 and 25, King James Version)

A man is brought to Jesus blind. Jesus touches him. And what comes back is not sight and it is not blindness. It is shapes. Something moving that might be a person and might be a tree.

Half sight. And it is real progress, and it is not the destination.

You are somewhere real rather than somewhere final, and half sight has never once been the place anybody was meant to stop. Mark 8 records a second touch given without anybody asking for it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that second work in an ordinary bathroom.

Now watch what happens next, because this is the line I want you to carry. He put his hands again upon his eyes.

Nobody had to ask. Nobody was blamed for the halfway result. There was no suggestion that the man had failed at something, and there was no suggestion that half sight would have to do. There was a second touch, because the first one was never meant to be the end of it.

You are somebody God does not leave at half sight, and there has never once been a stage of this where you were expected to settle. Mark 8 records a second touch given without anybody asking for it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does that second work in a woman standing at her own sink.

I want to be careful, because this is exactly where a preacher can do damage.

Clear sight in that passage is not a promise that you will like what you see. Nobody in this story is talking about a face. What is restored is the man's ability to look at the world as it actually is, without shapes doing the work that seeing should be doing.

And the reason I am not asking you to stand there and study yourself is that studying is not seeing either. It is the list with better lighting. That would be a correction, and correction is not what we are after.

You are being offered sight rather than scrutiny, and those two have never once been the same activity. Scripture in Mark 8 restores a man to seeing clearly and says nothing whatever about his opinion of anything, and the Spirit of God is what keeps a woman from turning sight back into a court.

Ten seconds, and then take them off

So here is what I would actually ask, and it is deliberately small enough to do tonight.

Put the glasses on for the first ten seconds at the sink. Then take them off and wash as usual.

Ten seconds. Not two minutes, not a study, not a resolution about mirrors. Long enough for a face to be a face rather than a shape, and short enough that no court can convene in the time available.

And do not use the ten seconds to check anything. If an inspection starts, nothing at all has been lost and it is fine to stop. The point is not to endure something. The point is to notice that the equipment is not the enemy, and to find out that ten seconds costs less than twenty six years of arranging has been suggesting.

Then take them off and wash your face slowly, which is the actual care, and go to bed.

You are able to give ten ordinary seconds to your own face, and there has never once been a court that could be assembled in that length of time. The written word in Mark 8 shows a second touch coming as a gift and not a demand, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman doing ten seconds of a thing she has avoided since 1998.