Part 1: What We’ve Forgotten How to See
Have you ever been with a child and they stop and notice the same scene you are looking at, but they see something completely different? A friend is walking through the museum with his six-year-old niece when she stops suddenly in front of a painting—not one of the famous masterpieces that adults typically notice, but a small landscape tucked away in a corner. “Uncle,” she whispered, tugging on his sleeve, “look how the trees are dancing with the clouds.” When the uncle followed her gaze and saw what he had missed entirely: the way the brushstrokes created movement, the way the artist had captured something alive and joyful that his educated eye had categorized simply as “nineteenth-century landscape, probably minor artist.” The curator in the museum had told him what to “see”, his niece less so.
In that moment, she was seeing something he had been trained not to see. Or perhaps more accurately, had been educated out of seeing it.
We live in a world that prizes what can be measured, proven, and replicated. This is not inherently problematic—scientific thinking has given us tremendous gifts, solved countless problems, and expanded our understanding of the physical universe in remarkable ways. But somewhere in our journey toward intellectual sophistication, many of us have inadvertently closed the doors to other ways of knowing, other forms of truth that cannot be captured in laboratories or proven through logical arguments.
Children, before they learn to be embarrassed by wonder, well before they discover that adults often dismiss what cannot be explained, possess what I call “the open eyes of the heart.” They approach the world with a willingness to believe that trees might indeed dance with clouds, that love is a real force that can be felt even when it cannot be weighed, that mystery is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be entered. And many times, they enter it willingly. How many of us had an imaginary playmate? I know I did, at least before my siblings arrived on the scene.
This capacity for wonder is not naivety—it is a form of spiritual intelligence that recognizes a dimension of reality our rational minds often overlook. When a child trusts that someone loves them, they are not being unscientific; they are responding to evidence that exists in the realm of relationship, gesture, presence, and care. These are real data, even if they cannot be quantified. (A frequent response in our family to “love you” is “love you more”, from the child.)
Yet as we mature intellectually, we often develop what might be called “educated skepticism”—a protective mechanism that guards us from being fooled or appearing foolish. We learn to question everything, to demand proof for every claim, to be suspicious of experiences that cannot be replicated in controlled conditions. While this serves us well in many contexts, it can also close us off from the very experiences our souls most need.
The matters of the soul—love, meaning, purpose, connection with the divine—exist largely in the realm of feeling, faith, emotion, and trust. These are not lesser forms of knowledge; they are different forms of knowledge. A mother’s love for her child is no less real because it cannot be measured with instruments. The peace that comes from prayer is not imaginary because it cannot be reproduced on demand. The sense of meaning that emerges from serving others is not delusional because it cannot be proven through double-blind studies.
When we insist that only what can be scientifically verified is real, we cut ourselves off from precisely those experiences that make life worth living. We may gain intellectual sophistication, but we risk losing the connection with our soul; where the divinity resident in our soul gives us the ability to recognize and receive the gifts that exist beyond the reach of our analytical minds.
Young children have not yet learned to be ashamed of mystery. They can hold two contradictory ideas without anxiety, accept that some things cannot be explained, and trust their interior responses to people and situations. They live naturally in what the contemplative tradition calls “unknowing”—not ignorance, but a willingness to remain open to realities that exceed their understanding.
This is why Jesus told his followers that they needed to become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven. He was not advocating for intellectual regression but for spiritual receptivity—the recovery of that childlike capacity to trust, to wonder, to remain open to mysteries that cannot be controlled or fully comprehended.
The divine prefers to work in the realm of mystery. God speaks through burning bushes and still small voices, through dreams and synchronicities, through the love we feel for others and the peace that passes understanding. These are not primitive superstitions but sophisticated forms of communication that require different kinds of literacy to receive.
Perhaps this is why so many spiritual traditions emphasize the need for “beginner’s mind”—the willingness to approach the sacred with the fresh eyes of someone who does not already know everything, (or think they do) who remains curious rather than certain, who can be surprised by grace.
But here’s what I discovered in my own journey back to childlike wonder: the child within us never really disappears. That capacity for awe, for trust, for seeing dancing trees and feeling the reality of love—it remains, buried beneath layers of intellectual sophistication and protective skepticism, waiting patiently for us to remember what we once knew instinctively.
The question becomes: how do we find our way back? How do we recover those open eyes of the heart without abandoning the wisdom we’ve gained through experience? And perhaps most importantly, what happens when we do?
Reflection and Image Copyright 2025 Michael J. Cunningham OFS