Unseen vs Invisible

Dear reader, how are you?  We are in the midst of fall, a glorious season with crisp apples, crisp autumn air, crisply pressed sweaters, and crisp colors.  I hope this finds you well.

This season finds me well enough.  About a month ago though, a parasite decided to make my intestinal tract its new home and I now have a new appreciation for the power of invisible forces.  I felt like my wish for washboard abs got confused and instead I was granted the sensation of having my intestines wrung on a washboard by a burly washerwoman.  Let me tell you, that washboard can do a number on your gut.  The experience got me thinking about the words unseen and invisible.  Invisible means "unable to be seen; not visible to the eye" while unseen means "not seen or noticed."  These words are remarkably similar--one could even argue they are synonyms--but I feel that they have important enough differences to be careful with how we use them.

I attach invisible to words that we experience but cannot really see: love, pain, fear, peace, faith, grief, joy, doubt, basically any feelings.  While the invisible is not in itself visible to the eye, we do manifest these feelings, and generally choose how to do so.  Smiles indicate happiness or pleasure, grimaces reveal pain, and so on.  This is where unseen comes in.  Unseen refers to that which is there, but not revealed or shared or noticed.  It is more linked to choice than invisible.  The invisible cannot really help being invisible, but the unseen hinges on a individual's willingness to reveal or observe what is really there.  This interaction between Batman and Alfred illustrates this reticence to share and thus remain unseen wonderfully.

Sometimes I feel that if I decide to let something I feel go unseen, that feeling doesn't exist.  Unfortunately, this usually backfires.  BAD.  Really, awfully, terribly, cringeworthy bad.  Bringing the unseen to light is excruciatingly uncomfortable for me, but each time I have done it, others met it with compassion, appreciation, and concern.  Why?  Because people generally get it.  They have their own battles and tendencies to let the invisible go unseen as well.  H. Jackson Brown Jr. urges us to "remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something."  I think he is on to something.  When we do remember these, our interactions change.  Listening and sincerity and kindness take the place of jabbering and comparison and selfishness.  We may not change overnight, and misunderstandings still happen, but the world shifts from lonely and irritated isolation to healing and invigorating community.

My siblings, some of my favorite people...and the photographer's logo 

One of my favorite thinkers, Wendell Berry, writes that "healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation."  I'm inclined to agree.  While I don't think that healing requires us to be with others all day, every day (my introverted self would crumble at such a requirement...or just be content with being unhealed), I do think God in his mercy and wisdom, generously provides family and friendships and community to help us be whole.  It takes a lot of work and an unfathomable amount of patience, but it is beautiful.  

A Favorite

Lines written in the days of growing darkness, by Mary Oliver

Every year we have been

witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.