Dr. Carolyn Lee reflects on a different cliché each week. Recently, in her blog “The More the Merrier,” she acknowledges her phobia converning lare numbers of people. This week Carolyn explores the cliché, seeing is believing.

Learn more about Dr. Carolyn Lee on her biography page or investigate 29 more clichés in her latest book, Keep Your Eye on the Ball And Other Clichès to Live By. 

Seeing Is Believing 

In Frederick Buechner’s wonderful book, Listening to Your Life, he recalls an incident that happened to him when he was on bivouac with his infantry training battalion in Anniston, Alabama. It was winter, cold and drizzly, and “everything was mud.” He had finished eating the supper out of his mess kit when he saw that the guy next to him had a turnip left over that he wasn’t going to eat. Frederick asked if he could have it, and when the guy tossed the turnip to him, it fell into the mud. He was so hungry that he picked it up and started eating it, anyway, mud and all. He described what happened next this way: 

And then, as I ate it, time deepened and slowed down again. With a lurch of the 
heart that is real to me still, I saw suddenly, almost as if from beyond time 
altogether, that not only was the turnip good, but the mud was good, too, 
even the drizzle and cold were good, even the Army that I had dreaded for months.

Sitting there in the Alabama winter with my mouth full of cold turnip and mud,

I could see, at least for a moment, how if you ever took truly to heart

the ultimate goodness and joy of things, even at their bleakest,

the need to praise someone or something for it would be so great

that you might even have to go out and speak of it to the birds of the air.

The first time I read this passage, I was taken back to a very strange experience I had when I was still in college. One morning I was alone in my little apartment. There was nothing at all remarkable about the day. I was wearing a pair of corduroy pants and a fleecy sweatshirt; I had a glass of orange juice in my hand. I was listening to Mendelssohn’s incidental music from  A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Suddenly, it was as if a veil was lifted, and I was sensing  everything for the first time. I was astonished by the beauty of it all. Nothing had ever felt as soft as that sweatshirt or tasted as sweet as that orange juice. The passage of Mendelssohn’s music playing at that moment was the most gorgeous thing I had ever heard. I just stood there, taking it all in and realizing that something odd—and maybe important—was happening to me. This experience lasted a very few minutes; then it was over; the veil came back down. I wanted more. I thought maybe if I lifted the needle on my record player and put it back on the passage that seemed to trigger this weird episode, I could recreate the experience, lift the veil and feel again the—what was it?—“ecstasy” I had felt moments before. But, no, it was gone.

I happened to be taking a philosophy course that semester, and one of our assignments was to keep a journal in which we wrote about all the profound thoughts we were having as we approached the end of the school year. I wrote about this strange thing that had happened to me and turned my journal in to be evaluated by my professor. When he returned it to me, he had written in the margin of that entry, “I think you might have had a mystical experience.” I had no idea what a mystical experience was, but I was very proud to have had one, and I was pretty sure it distinguished me as a deep thinker. 

I have no idea who M.P. Montague was, but she once wrote a paper entitled “Twenty Minutes of Reality,” in which she described one of these short-lived revelations. She wrote, “I saw no new thing, but I saw all the usual things in a miraculous new light—in what I believe is their true light.” She believed that the “gray veil of unreality” was briefly swept aside, and she had seen into Reality. 

There are many definitions and explanations and analyses of “mystical experiences.” They come in widely varying forms. The truth is that no one seems to know, absolutely and definitively, what is going on here. Rational, simple language cannot fully express this strange clearing of vision, this unexpected flash of what appears to be truth. It is encouraging to note, though, that most people who have this experience report that the Reality they encounter is inexpressibly beautiful. Like Frederick Buechner, they want to praise something or someone, speak of it to the birds, shout it from the rooftops.  

My own personal, faintly “mystic” experience happened more than sixty years ago, so apparently, I am not going to forget it. It did not profoundly alter the path of my life, but it did give me reason to believe that there is something more, something beyond, the “reality” I experience every day. This morning, just to see what would happen, I got on YouTube and typed “Mendelssohn’s Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream” into the search slot. I didn’t experience a lifting of the veil, but oh, my, what a gorgeous piece of music.

What’s next after Seeing is Believing?

Check out Dr. Carolyn Lee’s blogs on her website, she features a new cliché each week or you can order her new book, Keep Your Eye on the Ball And Other Clichès to Live By. Want to know more about the woman behind the words? Read more about Carolyn here. We hope you enjoyed this article learning more about the cliché, seeing is believing.