Articles & Papers

The People of the Eyes

By John Sumwalt
Originally published in Open Hands, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Fall 1995)

Once upon a time, a millennium or two ago, on a volcanic island that has long since been covered by the waters of the sea, there existed a small nation known as the People of the Eyes. The Eyesonians were distinguished by their large round eyes and by the fact that they valued seeing clearly more than anything else. At the center of their city, on the highest hill overlooking the sea, stood a beautiful temple which had been carved in the shape of an eyeball. The windows and turrets of the temple were gilded in gold and on the pinnacle, which pointed outward and upward over the sea, was the pupil of the eye: a large observatory enclosed in dark, tinted glass. Every day seventeen priests in burgundy robes climbed a long, elliptical staircase to the center of the eye and took their places in the holy seers’ chairs, where they read the clouds that passed before them over the waves. Their readings were recorded in the Scroll of Visions to be read and interpreted by the high priest on Seeing Days.

The faithful ascended the hill once every week on these Seeing Days to pay homage to the All Seeing One, the Great Eye, whom they believed to be the giver of all life. They passed first through the Hall of Benefactions to lay down their tithes of silver and gold. Then those who were deemed worthy — those who had clear seeing eyes and thus pure hearts — were admitted into the Visionarium to offer prayers to the All Seeing One and to listen as the high priest read from the Scroll of Visions.

Ironically, the persons with the most status and power in this society that valued seeing clearly above all things were those who had just one eye. Only the One-Eyes were permitted to be priests, political leaders, healers, teachers, and merchants. It was believed that they possessed a clarity of vision unequaled by persons who had two eyes or three eyes.

Two-eyed people worked in lower level jobs in the fishing fleet, in the marketplace, and as managers of the households of their one-eyed masters. They were given no formal education and could not vote in the elections, but were allowed to enter the temple and to offer their prayers from a roped off section in the back of the Visionarium.

Three-eyed persons, who made up only about 10 percent of the population, were considered to be unclean—an abomination in the eye of the deity and unfit to enter the temple on any occasion. Their extra eye was believed to distort their vision, preventing them from seeing clearly. The Two-Eyes lorded over them and forced them to do the most menial and undesirable tasks. They were shunned altogether by the One-Eyes. Marriage was forbidden to them and, according to a strictly enforced law, they were not to look a two-eyed person or a one-eyed person in the eye. Any group of three one-eyed persons or six two-eyed persons could, upon the word of a single witness, have a three-eyed person’s eyes put out for as much as glancing at their better’s face. Hundreds of three-eyed persons had suffered this miserable fate. They made their living by begging outside the gates of the temple on Seeing Days.

This cruel three-tiered caste system grew harsher with each passing year. Whenever a three-eyed baby was born—always to two-eyed or one-eyed parents because three-eyed persons were not allowed to give birth—a day of mourning was declared and the child was taken to a sanitarium on the edge of the island to be raised and schooled in the ways of his or her own kind. Some parents resisted this forced parting and managed to keep their three-eyed children for a time, but the authorities always found them out. Then the parents were taken in chains before the high priest to be admonished. “You are not seeing clearly,” he would say. “Our ways are the will of the Great Eye. The All Seeing One’s words are written in the Scroll of Visions. Let all eyes be open to the truth of the way.” So the oppression and the persecution went on for centuries, until one day there came a new vision.

A young priest was reading the clouds that day from his perch in the pupil-shaped observatory on the pinnacle of the temple when he happened to see a most unusual formation passing before him. A large, dark cloud, which appeared to have three eyes, was swallowing up two smaller clouds. One of the smaller clouds had one eye and the other had two eyes. After a time, the three clouds separated and floated along together, equal in size, until they disappeared over the horizon.

When the young priest reported his most unusual sighting to the other priests, they agreed that the message was unmistakably clear. He was about to record in the Scroll of Visions what he had seen when the high priest intervened, saying, “I cannot deliver a message like that to the people. It is more than they will be able to accept. They will not believe it is from the All Seeing One. Many of them will be angry with us and they will stop coming to the temple on Seeing Days. How will we operate the temple without their tithes of silver and gold? Surely the All Seeing One would not want us to read a vision from the Scroll that would cause our people to turn away.”

“But what, then, shall we record in the Scroll of Visions?” one of the youngest priests inquired.

“We shall say that there was no new vision this week. I shall simply read one of the old visions as I have often done in the past when no new vision was given. When the time is right, when the people are ready, then we shall share this new vision with them.”

So the new vision was not recorded in the Scroll of Visions.

On the very next Seeing Day, just as the high priest stood up to read from the scroll, the temple was struck by a bolt of lightning which shattered the glass in the pupil observatory high above the Visionarium where the worshipers were seated. A single shard of the broken glass fell straight down into the center of the Visionarium, piercing the heart of the high priest, and he fell down dead. All of the people, including the sixteen remaining priests, were terrified. No one moved and not a word was spoken for several moments. At last, one of the younger priests, the one who had sighted the startling cloud formation, stepped forward.

“Be calm. Have no fear,” he said as he looked out on the frightened worshipers. “We have a new vision to share with you. We had planned to keep it from you until a later time, but now it is clear that we cannot hide what the All Seeing One wishes you to see.” Then he told them exactly what he had seen in the clouds and announced that three-eyed, two-eyed, and one-eyed people should all be considered equal, as it had been declared by the Great Eye. In the same moment, the eyes of the three-eyed blind beggars outside the temple gates were healed and they rushed into the Visionarium, fell on their knees, and began to give thanks to the All Seeing One for their deliverance.

From that day on, everyone among the People of the Eyes saw clearly and lived in peace and harmony together.

Source

This story is reprinted from Lectionary Stories, Cycle A by permission of CSS Publishing Company, 517 S. Main Street, PO Box 4503, Lima, OH 45802-4503.

John Sumwalt is senior pastor of Wauwatosa Avenue United Methodist Church in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He and his wife Jo Perry-Sumwalt, Christian education director at the same church, are co-authors of a new book, Life Stories: A Study in Christian Decision Making (CSS Publishing), 1995.

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