It was always there. That cannot be refuted. Its presence was not always seen or felt, but it came into focus one morning listening to a broadcast on NPR.
The broadcast brought together two women, close friends, a reporter and a police officer.
The reporter: An African American woman. Schooled in journalism. Trained to see what is not seen and to communicate knowledge to others.
The police officer: A caucasian woman. A veteran of the New York Police Department (NYPD).
Together these women would watch the video of Eric Garner being wrestled to the ground by officers of the NYPD and hear Eric’s pleading words, “I can’t breathe.”
Together they would watch the same video but it seemed as if they were watching something completely different from the other. Over and over again the officer would watch the scuffle and say “he is resisting, he is resisting.” The reporter couldn’t see it. All she could see was a man profiled for his race and the victim of excessive police force. By the end of the report, you could hear the strain in each woman’s voice. The tension came through the radio and I suspect their long friendship was hanging on by a thread.
What kept these two women, watching the same video, from seeing the same thing? Lenses.
A lens focuses our attention. In days past, to take a picture, one had to manually adjust the camera’s lens’ to bring into focus that which you were taking a picture of. Two people could stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon. One might choose to focus their lens on the small yellow flower struggling to bloom on the canyon’s edge. Another might take the same picture but instead focus on the vast expanse of the Arizona skyline. Both pictures are an accurate representation of what each photographer saw and chose to emphasize.
Each of us sees our world through a unique lens. A lens honed by the experiences of our life. Most of us never give any thought to the lens through which we are looking at the world and in so doing, fail to realize that our lens is distorting our perceptions, allowing us to see some things and to not see other things. As the two women watched the same video neither could see what they other saw, because of their lens.
I began to wonder what my lens might be. I wondered what I might be seeing and what I might not be seeing because of how my life had honed my lens of perception. The truth is we cannot escape our experience and the way it will change the way we see the world around us but we can recognize that it is there.
I still cannot fully comprehend the protests in Florida, Missouri, Maryland and other places. But I can believe they are seeing this world differently than I.
For each one of us, step back and ask: Could there be another perspective I am not seeing? When I do not understand how another cannot see what seems so obvious to me ask: What life experiences might this person have had that causes them to see what they see?
Knowing we have a lens leads us forward to a path of understanding.
Pastor Stephen