Believing is seeing. The old saying is "seeing is believing" but what we believe affects what we see. Our brains try to make sense of what is before us using data from previous experience and what is is expected. New discoveries often come when we are asleep or in an environment where "what we know" is blocked by some other factor. Suddenly the universe shifts and we can never go back to the old vision. My father was a teenager when he was fooling around in a drugstore with friends - trying on the glasses from a rack of various lens strengths. Suddenly he realized his inability to see - he did not know clear focussed vision until then.

HAPPY EASTER!!!


Once more the northbound Wonder

Brings back the goose and crane,

Prophetic Sons of Thunder,

Apostles of the Rain.


In many a battling river

The broken gorges boom;

Behold, the Mighty Giver

Emerges from the tomb!

Now robins chant the story

Of how the wintry sward

Is litten with the glory

Of the Angel of the Lord.


His countenance is lightning

And still His robe is snow,

As when the dawn was brightening

Two thousand years ago.


O who can be a stranger

To what has come to pass?

The Pity of the Manger

Is mighty in the grass.

Undaunted by Decembers,

The sap is faithful yet.

The giving Earth remembers,

And only men forget.


John G. Neihardt wrote this poem in 1908 after the pieces of it came to him in a dream, and he later considered it one of his best. Neihardt, poet laureate of Nebraska, taught English and poetry at the University of Missouri - Columbia for a number of years.