This week has been a week of seeing in a new way. Since Fr. Lou’s homily on Sunday I’ve been looking at how and what I look at and seeing it a new or nuanced way. This has been a week of sadness too as one of the members of our Secular Franciscan Fraternity passed to a new life yesterday. Death of some one close often has a way of helping me to see what is and what might be. A couple of quotes have gotten me thinking in a new way one is from George Bernard Shaw and the other from the Talmud.
“We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” –Talmud
I heard the the Talmud quote in a TED talk by Alan Kays that I watched this afternoon. Sunday as I was out driving I was listening to a Wayne Dyer book and he mentioned this quote which I had always attributed to Ted Kennedy but is in fact originally from Shaw who is also one of my favorite playwrights.
Some people see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not?–George Bernard Shaw
Both quotes are more like koans than quotes.