A "Glimpse" of First Seeing

139
He heals a blind man
Luke 18:35-43

THEN, AS HE WAS APPROACHING Jericho, it happened that there was a blind man sitting by the roadside, begging. He heard the crowd passing and enquired what it was all about. And they told him, “Jesus the man from Nazareth is going past you.” So he shouted out, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!”
     Those who were in front tried to hush his cries. But that made him call out all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me!”
     So Jesus stood quite still and ordered the man to be brought to him. And when he was quite close, he said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” “Lord, make me see,” he cried.
     “You can see! Your faith has cured you,” returned Jesus. And his sight was restored at once, and he followed Jesus, praising God. All the people who saw it thanked God too.

Just after…

THEY ARE AN INTERESTING SIGHT—this wild-eyed man, gazing at everything with frenzied, half-crazed countenance; and this other: calm, smiling, delighted—as they walk onward toward the city of Jericho. The former will sprint ahead, and then come back to the latter.
     “What are those distant upward places?” he asks.
     “Hills,” says the other.
     “And what is their color called?”
     “Brown. Or, perhaps…sandy-brown.”
     The wild-eyed man has hit upon a pattern, he realizes.
     He looks up. “And this, I imagine, is the ‘sky’ I’ve heard so much about?”
     The other nods.
     “And what do you call this color I see?”
     “Blue.”
     “And those soft-looking things that move across its blue and stain the ground with blackness?”
     “Clouds.”
     “Which—”
     “—are white.”
     Then he begins, without explanation, to point to different trees, plants and bushes. The other man, knowing his meaning, simply lists the name of each toward which he points: “Palm… Almond… Pine… Olive… Date… Papyrus reeds…”
     They are now arriving at the outside edge of Jericho.
     A street or two in, they happen upon a shop of fineries. The quiet man escorts the other inside; into the cool, dark interior.
     The two men stand and look into a bronze mirror, housed within a gaudy gilded frame. There they are, reflected: the wild-eyed man and the smiling other.
     “And, you see,” says the latter, “that’s you.”