Oliver Sacks, an eminent neurologist wrote a book entitled, “The man who mistook his wife for a hat.” This describes the phenomenon of visual agnosia – where despite normal vision the brain cannot recognise the object.
Vision is dependent on our eyes, including the lens, the muscles of the iris, as well as the muscles that move the eyes together. The retina then translates the information into nerve impulses that travel along the optic nerve to the part of the brain responsible for vision, the occipital lobe.
As you can imagine it is not as “simple” as that. The occipital lobe has several other functions including visual spatial processing – the computer part of our vision, memory formation – how recognise objects we’ve seen before, and distance and depth perception – seeing things in 3D.
What is our spiritual vision?
Where do we see Jesus? Do we recognise him in others? Do we sometimes search for him in the wrong places, or ignore him when he is in “plain sight”?
Prayer: Merciful Lord, help us to have our eyes opened to your love. Forgive our spiritual blindness and our faithless searching. Thank you that you are the visible and risen Lord, who appears to us in so many different ways. Amen