“There are two eyes in the human head–the eye of mystery, and the eye of harsh truth–the hidden and the open–the woods eye and the prairie eye.”
– Bill Holm
I have fondness for people who belong to a place; whether city or a landscape. They tend speak in a particular way or with a certain cadence. Knowledgeable about particulars that tourists overlook. There was a writer from the Minnesota prairies named Bill Holm. who translates this sense of belonging to a landscape into perspective, a metaphor for our vision of reality. Bill Holm writes*,
Holm later admits that he struggles to see the beauty of the woods or mountains–what he calls vertical beauty– but show him a desert, savanna, or prairies and he swoons. I appreciate the distinctive concept of the prairie eye and the woods eye. We have a natural preference for what draws our attention, admiration and for how we read reality before us. It is often rewarded and further curated by that reinforcement of this perspective. My dominant eye is a prairie, the one Holm calls the eye of light. My sitting practice has minimized my reliance on this dominant eye, one could say that this is detaching my dominant eye, allowing a third eye to emerge, an eye that merges the prairie and the woods eye, seeing Christ in what is hidden and what is open. The spotlight of attention becomes the starlight of darkness and brightness mapping constellations on our soul. The invitation of Holm is to be aware of your dominant eye, the invitation of practice is to detach from it and open the third eye who winks at Christ in both the prairies and the woods.
*Holm, Bill. The Music of Failure. University of Minnesota Press. 1985, p 17.
photo by Contemplify
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