I have recently been measured up for my first prescription glasses…

A rite of passage that feels quite significant.

I now will probably use a glasses case, rather than throw them carelessly into bags, balance them on the top of my head or lose them everywhere…and handle the expensive, expertly created spectacles with due reverence rather than the ‘devil may care attitude I’ve had up till now…I’ve watched people take their glasses carefully out of their case…as if they’re a delicate flower or piece of china…

 Up till now I’ve got away with cheap readers from discount shops and feel robbed if I’ve paid more than £20 for a pair. I say this to most glasses wearers and they blanch with envy…up until now that is…

They haven’t arrived back yet from the lens grinder so I’ve been waiting with great excitement…

I took the chance when being measured by the optician to show him a pair of glasses I found in my grandparents’ house. He estimated they were probably Georgian so maybe a couple of hundred years old…and were straight magnifying reading glasses:

I have carefully tried them on to see if I could see through them…and felt a frisson of timelessness as my eyes adjusted to the small round lenses and I read through them easily.

What a different world the earlier owner would have seen when they were first worn…it’s hard to imagine their world as it would be hard for them the other way round…and yet this is what we do all the time when we read a novel created in the past, or gaze at a created image, a painting or sculpture…

It’s what we do too when we listen deeply to another person…we begin to see the world through their eyes…It reminds me of a poem by John Fox, in the final verse he writes:

When someone deeply listens to you,
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.

May this Advent bring you the blessing of finding your beloved land within you.