I want you to close your eyes and be still for a moment…. Now I want you to think about a time, or times, in which you were truly seen. Not in someone actually seeing you in order to walk around you, or avoid you, but when someone saw into the depths of your soul, for lack of a better term. Perhaps they saw something in you that you didn’t see in yourself, some gift or talent. Or they pushed you beyond what you ever thought possible yourself to help you achieve something. Or they were they for you when it mattered the most, doing something for you that few other people could or would do. Have you thought about that moment? Now, how did it make you feel? Not intellectually but emotionally. I’m guessing that some of those feelings might be about belonging, or valued or appreciated, perhaps honored or respected, and perhaps you felt happy or flattered or even cherished and treasured. And all of those things have some connection with love, not as the feeling per se, but as the sense of someone wanting the best for you. And all of those are connected to the sense of relationship, which is what we are tackling today. And since today is Mother’s Day, I would also be willing to bet that for a significant number of us, the people who have truly seen us have tended to be women, perhaps our mothers, but perhaps not, but maybe an aunt, grandmother, neighbor, teacher or someone at church, someone whose eyes bore into us in a special way and with whom we therefore had a deeper relationship than normal.
Now every relationship does not mean that we are seen in that sense, but when we are seen it makes a difference and connects us in a different way, and it changes us and it can even change the world. (SLIDE 2) In his national book award winning novel, The Invisible Man, widely considered one of the best and most important novels of the last Century, Ralph Ellison begins his tale of a black man in American society by saying “I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids-- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me…. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality…. you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds…. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you.” And that sense of invisibility, and striking out, also plays a significant role of what is happening in the world as we think about relationship.