166

[newspaper cutting]

BLIND
Ruskin once said that "to see clearly
is poetry, prophecy, religion--all in
one."

Close your eyes and imagine that they
will never be opened for you again.
Think of the things you have missed, as
well as those you've seen--the things
that you would first want to see should
you be permitted to see again.

Those whose sight has been taken
from them are not the only blind people
in the world.

You who can see and refuse to see, are
worse than blind. I believe that God's
first desire for this earth was that it
should be beautiful, and then His next
wish must have been that everyone in it
should be beautiful, and then that the
people in His beautiful world should
look for and love beauty.

But great things, in the manner of
great human beings, become common-
place just the moment that we sink
into the commonplace and close our eyes
to the instances of greatness and beauty
all about us.

Take the rainy day, for instance. The
glistening streams of sparkling water
fight through space and splatter upon
the walks and roofs and green grass.
How fresh the leaves and flowers and all
of earth as the song of rain goes on!

Perhaps there is a lessening and the
raindrops give way to clouds of mist
that overcast and gray the heavens
and the buildings and all objects of the
ground. A Whistler comes along and
puts it all into beauty upon a piece of
canvas--and behold, what a master-
piece! With the rich outbidding each
other to possess it.

Blind--"aren't we all?"
Then the next morning, when the sun
begins to spread its golden rays over the
top of the earth again, how could such
beauty be without the rain that so many
failed to unde stand in terms of beauty?

Use the eyes of your head--then open
the eyes of your mind. Look about you
every day. Everywhere you go, try to
see something new, something beautiful.

It is possible for you to travel a thou-
sand miles across a perfect fairyland,
with only the tint of a flower upon your
mind.

Will you do it--or will you just be
blind?

--George Matthew Adams.