Fortune tellers, flamenco dancers, protesters, and tourists were thronging the plaza around the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See, the old Catholic cathedral in Seville. Billed as the largest Gothic cathedral, the third-largest Christian church in the world, and the resting place of Columbus’ bones, the crowds around the cathedral should have been expected. My conference ended earlier that morning and my colleagues and I were taking a few moments to take in the sights of the old quarter in Seville.
But since we didn’t have much time, we were hurrying to the entrance on the other side. Not paying attention, I stepped up onto the sidewalk to take what I thought was a shortcut around the crowd, thinking that the more quickly we got to the front, the more time we would have inside.
I darted around and between what I thought were two white statues. Statues which I quickly realized were not statues at all, they were horses. Real horses. Now if you are even slightly familiar with horses, then you almost certainly know how much they dislike being approached from their rear and how badly they can react to being surprised.
It took only a moment to realize that I really needed to extricate myself from what could have become a sticky situation. At this point, only half focused on getting to the front of the cathedral, which I never entered by the way, I noticed that the horses weren’t reacting to my presence at all.
It took me only a moment to see the blinders—a simple but ingenious invention used to keep race horses and driving horses calm while under bridle.
But what’s even more interesting, at least to me, is that even though we walk on two legs instead of four, humans are exactly the same.
If we don’t know that hunger, poverty, abuse, violence, or other injustices are occurring in our neighborhoods and communities, then there is no need to respond. So very often we simply help ourselves not to know. We keep busy and we keep our heads down. Not that we are involved in bad things, but simply that Satan can and does use normal everyday things to consume both our time and our lives. Things which at the time seem good and so important, but are in reality, temporal, and of very little eternal value.
We must be careful that we do not allow all that is shiny, or even what is comfortable, to blind us. The need around us is almost always intricately interwoven with the call of God on our lives.
With this spring let us challenge ourselves to take off the blinders and to see something that although unseen, unrecognized or ignored has perhaps, always been there.
What will you see?
– Austine
