[Mrs. Don-o]

Grateful2God --- and Grateful2U!

You said it all!

I love your tagline, by the way. That's the very line of the Tantum Ergo I love the best. Especially the two words "sensuum defectui" --- when the senses fail.

A little off-subject, but at the same time right on it: an amazing and humbling demonstration of how the senses fail. This is an optical illusion I found on Discoverymagazine:

And here's their explanation:

Blue green spiral illusion You see embedded spirals, right, of green, pinkish-orange, and blue? Incredibly, the green and the blue spirals are the same color. Huh?

I loaded the image in Photoshop and examined the two spirals. In the two squares displayed below, the one on the left is colored using the same color from the blue spiral, and on the right using the green spiral.

...........green and blue squares..

Like I said, incredible! For pedantry sake, the RGB colors in both spirals are 0, 255, 150. So they are mostly green with a solid splash of blue.

The reason they look different colors is because our brain judges the color of an object by comparing it to surrounding colors. In this case, the stripes are not continuous as they appear at first glance. The orange stripes don’t go through the "blue" spiral, and the magenta ones don’t go through the "green" one. Here’s a zoom to make this more clear:

Blue green spirals zoom

See? The orange stripes go through the "green" spiral but not the "blue" one. So without us even knowing it, our brains compare that spiral to the orange stripes, forcing it to think the spiral is green. The magenta stripes make the other part of the spiral look blue, even though they are exactly the same color. If you still don’t believe me, concentrate on the edges of the colored spirals. Where the green hits the magenta it looks bluer to me, and where the blue hits the orange it looks greener. Amazing.

The overall pattern is a spiral shape because our brain likes to fill in missing bits to a pattern. Even though the stripes are not the same color all the way around the spiral , the overlapping spirals makes our brain think they are. The very fact that you have to examine the picture closely to figure out any of this at all shows just how easily we can be fooled.

This is why I tell people over and over again: you cannot trust what you see even with your own eyes. Your eyes are not cameras faithfully taking pictures of absolute truth of all that surrounds you. They have filters, and your brain has to interpret the jangled mess it gets fed. Colors are not what they appear, shapes are not what they appear (that zoomed image above is square, believe it or not), objects are not what they appear.

Things are not as they appear!

And that related to my tagline...

[Grateful2God]

I knew you would make a great reply! It took me forever to see that color! Thanks for posting! You're right: there are things we must see on faith, for our senses can be easily decieved.

I think your tagline is lovely, too! Imagine, Jesus Himself, so tiny and inconspicuous, growing in His Mother's womb!

(O Mary, He whom the whole Universe cannot contain, enclosed Himself in your womb and was made man.)

It made me think of those who could not make room for an expectant Mother and her gentle, kind husband. Here the past meets the future: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do..."

What did their senses see? Perhaps the Holy Family passed unnoticed... What of the woman Abigail, the innkeeper's wife, who took pity on the poor couple and the Unborn Child? What grace of God filled her heart?

Imagine a cold night with a strange star in the skies, and a joyous message from Heaven itself! The shepherds knew poverty, yet wondered what could be so different about this tiny Child, and His parents that the angels themselves rejoiced at His coming?

And what of the Kings, so wealthy and powerful, yet so humbled in the face of this Child! Gentile, perhaps pagan; yet God chose them through their own beliefs, to find Him; He Who is the way, the truth, and the Life!

That one Child, Who began in impossible circumstances, according to the world, was the whole Purpose for God's creation of the universe! Yes, He Who created the universe and holds it in order by His will alone, chose to become that Child for our sake!

May we see Him with the eyes of Faith in the poor, the sick, the grieving. Let us pray for the wisdom to see Him! Let us praise His Mother and adoptive Father for their humility, and cooperation with God's Grace!

And may we see Him in the unborn, and the marginalized: give us, Lord, the grace to see you in all forms of humanity!

Thank you again, and God bless you, for giving us a lot to think about!