When they are on the road, horses wear blinders--cups of fabric on their eyes. A horse's eyes are on the side of their head, and they have almost a 360 degree peripheral vision, allowing them to see everything around them in a full circle. While on the road the blinders are necessary to keep the horse focused on what's in front of them. It keeps them from getting distracted and spooked by what is behind the wagon.
I went to my first pro-life sidewalk prayer vigil outside a Planned Parenthood last year. I have to admit, I was always a little intimidated by the pro-life crowd. In San Francisco years ago, a friend took me to a party where there were a lot of pro-life people my age; I felt uncomfortable, out of place, and I didn't know why. Maybe it was that the focus seemed too exclusive, too narrow, too focused for my tastes. I was a "360 degree" guy, a seamless garment. I left the party early and took a taxi back to where I was staying.
Back to the sidewalk vigil, though. I met a strong pro-life advocate, the aunt of a friend, who lived in Delaware. She was gracious and joyful, but very very committed to the cause. I emailed her one day, and she encouraged me to meet them outside Planned Parenthood at 7th and Shipley in Wilmington. It was a small gathering, and most people were older than me by a few decades, but they were focused, because they knew the great evil taking place inside the walls just a few hundred feet away. They realized they were fighting a war, spiritually, this rag tag group of sidewalk rebels, and they could not afford to be sidetracked.
There is a common refrain that happens sometimes in online commentary about moral issues that I've seen. It is that "you can't talk about X without considering A, B, C, D, E, F, etc..." But there is a kind of paralysis there that works against you in this mindset, the spectre of hypocrisy that hangs over the discussion. "If you were really pro-life," the reasoning goes, "you wouldn't just care about just unborn babies, but unwed mothers, refugees, poverty, universal health care, etc." And so the discussion becomes about everything, and unless all those things can be treated equally and solved first, any focus on X is a non-starter.
I'm starting to see the role of blinders in the Christian life--putting in place those things that keep us focused on Christ, the Cross, and our mission and charge as disciples. There is a negative connotation there--that blinders make us narrow-minded and bigoted--but when we find ourselves at war spiritually, we cannot afford to lose focus. If you've ever driven through a snowstorm, you can understand the need for concentration to stay on the road and see; limiting distractions almost becomes an issue of survival.
We will have times when life is easy and we find ourselves in a meadow or on a plateau. But other times we are climbing a crag and one small move, one patch of loose scree will send us hurtling down. Blinders in prayer, in mission work, during periods of spiritual warfare, sometimes become necessary. That could be blocking out certain music of TV programs, or limiting contact with people who will detract what Christ is trying to accomplish in us. It may mean discerning what we are uniquely called to, and what particular gifts to cultivate in order to accomplish that work, even if it is at the expense of other things, as St. Paul speaks about in 1 Cor 12.
It would be good to remember when we are paralyzed by the sheer volume of need or suffering in the world, or accused of inconsistency or hypocrisy, to put our blinders on--not to be oblivious to the world, but in order that we see what is in front of us, so that we may put our hand to the plow and not look back, as Christ encourages us to do. As St. Teresa of Calcutta said simply, "Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you."
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