The Eyes of God

Dreams; nighttime entertainment or serious business,

Truth from the depths? It’s over twenty years ago

Clattering up the stone stairs of an old castle

A knight in armor was chasing me to the top of

The tower with what I considered maliciousness in his heart.

As often happens with those of us who would

Rather avoid conflict then face it, I flew across

The court yard to the other side-hoping to land

On the wall. One problem was in the movement across I flew

downwards a little, just enough, to look through that

narrow opening, large enough for an arrow to get through

and was startled by a pair of eyes, piercing eyes, eyes

that penetrated to the depths of my being.



A few years later, the dream long forgotten, I

Slowed down to turn my car into our neighborhood street

Glancing up into the mirror to check for how close

The driver behind me followed, the mirror reflected those

Same eyes looking hauntingly into my depths.

Someone had hit the mirror and misaligned it upwards.

So the dream came quickly back to me as though I had

Only just finished the experience. I was shaken to my

Bones and pulled to the side of the road to catch my

breath and slow my heart. Was that what the dream

was about, seeing through my out of date, childish, self?



An old mystic once wrote the eyes with which we see God

God uses to see us (or something to that order). The eyes

in which I spy the world God uses to peek into my depths

into the center of my stuff, my life, and has a close up visual.

God is not simply outside me strumming some

old guitar, stroking his old hoary beard, having a cold one-

God is within me, whether known or unknown, as a resident.

No voting needed, no jumping through hoops for whatever

Religion, simply part of the stuff of my being, closer to me

Than I am to myself; than my breath.


God’s eyes are familiar, a huge piece of my Self; not

necessarily trammeled with garments; except flesh and blood.

I am like old Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers

providing safe journeys home. The saint who

carried (or tried to carry) the Christ-child across a

river and bore such weight from this child he near drowned. I

bear the Christ, God in the flesh, within me wherever I

go and am, sometimes unknown to me, sometimes with joy.


The eyes that bore into my heart in that dream---

The eyes of God?











Richard W. Smith,

January 22, 2011