Due to my astigmatism, I wore hard contact lenses early in life, and those darn little things were easy to lose. It took a long time to get a replacement, so I’d wear the remaining lens and become a one-eyed wonder until the new one arrived. This practice trained my brain to be tolerant of monovision—one eye feeds tolerably clear visual information into the brain while the other contributes only fuzzy approximations.
Decades later I had laser surgery and made this arrangement permanent. One eye tells me about things further away. The other allows me to read without glasses. I suspect my brain works overtime to sort this out, but I’m not conscious of that effort.
Monovision is cool. By simply closing one eye, I can remind myself nothing is ever exactly as it seems. My take on reality is based on the way I see things, but it’s not the whole picture. It’s just one view.
“Right on!” God chimed in as I was mulling this recently. “You would not believe how I look to a housefly.”
“True,” I said. “I don’t even believe how you look to me.”
“Is that so?” God asked. “I thought we were on better terms.”
I closed my left eye. Then the right. I tipped my head and considered looking at God upside down, but the thought made me queasy.
“What are you seeing?” God asked.
“Oh, the usual. Needs, vacancies, denial, anger, fear.”
“No, I mean what do I look like?”
“Old. Improbable. Vast. I wish you looked softer and safer, but you’re too vague.”
“Are all your eyes open?”
“I think so.”
“You’re wrong,” the Ultimate Optometrist said. “But I know you’re trying. Let me adjust these lenses for you.”
“No!” I yelled and backed away. Who wants God adjusting the way they see things? In my haste, I failed to glance behind, so I tripped and fell.
God rushed to my side and helped me up. “Are you hurt?” she asked.
I wasn’t sure how to answer. My pride was bruised, my fears, fully activated, my body felt fragile and clumsy, but was I hurt?
“That depends on what you mean by hurt,” I said finally. Then with my two eyes open, I looked straight at what I see to be God and added, “Are you real?”
“Oh, I love how you set me up,” God chuckled affectionately. “That depends on what you mean by God.”
Short visits with an honest God 