On my morning ‘exercise’-walk I passed our local industrial estate and saw a plate on the wall that said ‘BAY 24’. It was actually reversed, what they call ‘horizontal flip’ in image processing software. I guess that was so a lorry driver could see it correctly in a door mirror. The firm had taken care to make sure the driver saw the ‘correct’ image – though in order to do so, it had to turn things round. The other day I saw a TV show about the Hubble space telescope, and the trouble people went to to make sure it gave a correct and clear image. I wear glasses for long distance, because my eyes don’t give a clear image. Even what we see ‘directly’, though, is a nerve signal from an upside-down image on our retinas which has gone through a load of processes before we know what it means. I don’t think there is anything we can know directly. It’s all just a welter of different signals that (usually) we manage to fit into a world-model. Sometimes our processing goes awry: when I am very tired, I imagine I can discern voices in the sound of the sea or the wind for instance.
Why do I mention this? Perception is a slippery thing – I don’t think there’s any such thing as direct knowing – it’s all indirect, and mediated through a load of pathways outside and inside the body. Last Sunday’s reading, about Thomas recognising the risen Jesus after being invited to touch him, seems so real, it hits me with a kind of sledgehammer force (although I should point out the story doesn’t mention whether Thomas actually touched Jesus). But perception is a slippery thing. So I believe even this seemingly straightforward story is infused with mystery…. as, more obviously, is today’s reading, about the road to Emmaus.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” – though intravenous bleach probably isn’t one of them.
Also on the image front, our house nearly got into a picture on the BBC Derbyshire website, a long shot of the smoke from the moorland fire I mentioned a couple of days ago: modest excitement there, I think. BTW, whoever started the fire, what were they doing up there? Maybe it’s a selective lockdown.
I still don’t really know where I belong. My bus pass says Derbyshire, my council tax bill says High Peak (Derbyshire), the police are Derbyshire – but the trains all go to Manchester – that’s our TTWA (not that we work now). One consequence of the lockdown is that the pendulum swings towards the local, which is Derbyshire. Obviously I know I live in Derbyshire, but I’m not sure if the whole of my life belongs here.
God of love,
help us care for this earth,
this peat, this planet.
Help us care for one another,
taking care for each other’s lives.