I keep processing various things that I learned while in Kenya. On an evening in the Masai Mara a Masai man made himself available to several of us to tell us about their lives and answer questions. One woman asked him, “Do you ever watch TV?” He smiled, as if puzzled for a minute, and then replied, “No, in the night we feel we need to be looking into the world with our natural eyes.” As he said this he made a gesture with the first two fingers of his hand pointing toward his eyes and then out toward the world.

Now I am home and thinking about this. How do I look into the night with my natural eyes? The world offers a multitude of virtual distractions. Just as I am writing this my dog went out on my front porch to bark into the night – this dog who is now deaf and blind. He is sensing something, not with his eyes, and not with his ears, something he feels the need to bark at into the night. The natural eyes surely have nothing to do with physical sight, and are beyond physical hearing. They are a sense of another kind.

I’m going outside right now to sleep on my porch and dream into the world, hopefully with my natural eyes. The concept the Masai warrior named intrigues me and seems necessary.