Outside the Screen
When I was 18 I got my first pair of contact lenses. Since the age of twelve I would shyly pulled out my ugly glasses to see the chalkboard better, and then quickly hide them away, returning to the blur, the warped sacrifice of clear vision to the gods of style and fashion. Eye glasses were not yet a trend, if you get my drift. So, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Until that day at age 18 when the optometrist popped the lenses on my eyeballs, I didn’t have a clue about what I was missing. But when I stepped out into the parking lot, everything sharpened. I could see leaves on the trees, the clarity of blades of grass, the distinctive letters on road signs. Who knew how much I really needed to see things? Apparently, not me.
And even though I appreciate my contacts every morning when I put them in, I know there are other things I’m still not seeing clearly. As I write this, I’m sitting on a pleasant lanai, a very Floridian term for a screen-enclosed patio alongside a golf course waterway in sunny Florida.
Not a normal activity for me in mid-November. I’m usually home up North, reluctantly donning sweaters and sadly acquiescing to the graying view across our field. But this year, November gifted us with a trip down South, a precious visit with my mom, and the view from the lanai.
Early mornings before sunrise, you can find me here. Late afternoons when the sun sparks the water with light, you can find me here. Sunsets are the most fabulous from this spot! Over the years, I’ve enjoyed all there is to see of this view from the lanai...or so I thought.
Then the other morning, my all-time, favorite bird-creature, the Great Blue Heron slowly and gracefully meandered down the bank into the water in front of me, and I just had to get closer.
So I tip-toed out the screen door without letting it crash, and padded across the wet grass, and that’s when it happened. I experienced an entirely different view. Without the screen grid, everything I looked at seemed more vibrant, more alive with electric clarity. The early morning sunlight was brighter, the tropical birds painted the sky with deeper colors, the mist off the water looked more dreamlike and magical than I had noticed before. And the Great Blue seemed to nod in my direction as if to say, “See what you’ve been missing?”
How I needed that view, that new depth of beauty, and I didn’t even know it. I needed that ache of wonder and breathless appreciation that I could only know outside of the screen. I thought the screened-in view was good. I had no idea there was one even better.
But one year there was a hurricane that ripped through the neighborhood and ripped chunks of screen from the top of the lanai. I remember thinking that in just moments, just heartbeats, a violent storm can march through anywhere...through anyone. And I also remember standing there in the aftermath of cruel damage and looking straight up through those punctured and torn places and thinking “Wow, look at the piercing blue of that sky!” With the screen removed,
I could see in a new and fresh way, with a keen awareness of a beautiful sky. Something tragic, something damaging, something costly, brought immense clarity.
Screens, on a lanai, and on a life, offer a thin grid of protection...vertical and horizontal strands of wires woven to separate us from insects and errant birds, to let in filtered sunlight...protection from annoyances, a comforting, imagined level of safety. But screens cannot offer protection from angry storms. And it’s also true in life. No screen that I erect can ever shield me from fear, from loneliness, from grief, from disappointment. Those things still manage to get through. No screen can keep my kids safe, keep my bank account full, keep storms from happening. In a word, no screen can keep me...or anyone...from the unexpected twists and turns in the plot of our living.
And yet, it’s precisely in the unexpected that we can, even with weak, weary eyes, look up through the rips and tears and see with clarity something we never saw before. We can gasp with awe at unexpected beauty at a sight more bold, a path suddenly cleared for us, a brand new landscape outside the screen. And this hope tenderly nudges me as I consider all the gashes in my own life-screen. Before I try to repair, before I clumsily stitch up the holes, can I look through? And what will I see if I dare to step outside the screen that might really be breathtaking?
Simple, yet profound lessons from the lanai urge me to consider the expansiveness of life...of all life outside the screen. In a few short weeks, this bizarre year comes screeching to a halt. A year of unprecedented events, punctures, gaping holes in the fabric of the screen stretched across our world. For some of us, this year adds just one more in a string of slices through the screen. We’re running blindly, searching for needle and thread to sew up the holes, weaving together thin strands of wire to patch up and rebuild our screen-defense.
And I sense this need to pause. I feel compelled to look up through the broken places and study the sky. I wonder if, outside the screen, there are faces, souls I’ve never really studied before.
I wonder if, outside the screen there are new opportunities for changing and growing. Could it be that outside the screen, more courage is required, more boldness, more grace, more understanding? I don’t know...and not knowing can keep us...keep me...afraid.
In uncertainty, there is one thing that’s certain. Fear gets us nowhere. Fear leads me nowhere but limping down the road to more fear. Time is wasted. Energy is wasted. Abundant life right now is wasted. I want to carry the gold I’ve gleaned into the dawning year, and learn the lessons from the torn places. Allow them to change me, to show me all I’ve been missing, to gently take my hand and lead me outside the screen. Would you like to come along?
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