Reflection of the Week - 16 September 2025

By Father Richard Rohr

Posted Sep 16, 2025 in Faith

What Is Our Lens?

How do we learn to see and appreciate through eyes of love?  
—Brian McLaren and Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Learning How to See   

In the Learning How to See podcast, Brian McLaren describes some of the lenses that keep us from seeing the world clearly:  

Any of us who wear glasses know the experience of being in the optometrist’s office. You sit behind a machine where the optometrist gradually adjusts a series of lenses to help you get the right prescription to correct faulty vision. There’s a click and the doctor say, “Is that clearer now?” Click again. “Is that clearer or less clear?” Click again. “How about now?”

Some lenses help us see more clearly, others less clearly. Let me mention three lenses that make our seeing worse. One is the lens of authoritarianism. Through the lens of authoritarianism, we look at every person and judge them based on whether they share our allegiance against that common enemy, and allegiance to a dictator or a strongman. Authoritarianism always reduces our sight. Another lens is the lens of scapegoating, where we feel better about ourselves by uniting ourselves and projecting our aggression and shame on some other group of people, making them into an enemy. Scapegoating reduces the clarity of our vision, and so does supremacy, whether it’s based on race, religion, party, ideology, or nation. People spend billions of dollars to change the way we see each other through advertising, politics, propaganda, and the algorithms on social media. We all face the constant struggle of having our vision reduced by authoritarianism, scapegoating, supremacy, and no doubt, other bad lenses as well.

When asked about the lens through which she chooses to see the world, Quaker songwriter Carrie Newcomer shares her practice of seeing with the eyes of love: 

My life as a songwriter and a poet has asked me to consider how I look at the world on a daily, moment-to-moment kind of way…. Our first job is to pay attention and then to take in what we see with a certain kind of spirit and for me, a certain kind of love. I think it’s a practice and the more you practice it, the more you see; the more you see, the more you see with love…. 

The big things I love I love my husband. I love my daughter. I love justice. I love mercy…. I love so many big things, but my life is also filled every day with all these glorious little loves…. There can be great meaning and great love in small things. I love blueberries and I love the smell of lilacs, and I love how little kids hold each other’s hands when they go across the street….  

In looking at the small moment and the small thing through love, it’s not always completely joyous…. You take it all. When you decide I’m going to be here, I’m going to be present, and I’m going to be present with love, you take it all.

Reference

Fr. Richard Rohr, What Is Our Lens? — Center for Action and Contemplation

 

 

 

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