Looking Closely: The overlooked word in the teaching of the lilies of the field

A short ‘thought for the day’ offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Gathering of Mindful Meditation, Music & Conversation

(I’ll try to get a recording of this posted sometime in the next week or so)

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Introduction

When I originally wrote the following text during the week of 22nd June, I intended it as a stand-alone piece. In the end, however, I set it aside for that Sunday’s gathering to address the extreme heatwave we were experiencing across the UK and Europe (you can read that reflection at this link).

During that same period, I began drafting my address for Sunday, 12th July 2026, when my Dharma friend and Seiza teacher, Miki Nakura, will be visiting our congregation. He will be joining us, in part, to introduce interested people to Seiza (Quiet Sitting)—which, as some of you may know, was the preferred meditation practice of the Japanese Unitarian movement and my great free-religious hero, Imaoka Shin’ichirō.

It was only whilst drafting that upcoming address that I recognised an unexpected connection: a profound link between Seiza and the teaching of Jesus I explore below—namely, his invitation to ‘look closely’ at the lilies of the field.

You will have to wait until 12th July to see exactly how those threads weave together! Until then, I hope this prelude proves to be of some interest. Enjoy.    

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Looking Closely: The Overlooked Teaching of the Lilies of the Field 

As someone who takes the teachings of the human Jesus seriously, I often find myself returning to his advice to ‘look closely [katamanthanō / katanoeō] at the lilies of the field’ (see note 1 below). He reminds us that although these flowers ‘neither labour nor spin . . . not even Solomon in all his glory was garbed like one of them’ (see Matthew 6:28 & Luke 12:27).

Although we have all heard Sunday homilies that treat this in a terribly sentimental, superficial way, on a deeper level, we have come to understand Jesus was likely to have been speaking about trusting in divine providence, rejecting materialism, and finding freedom from anxiety. In this way, these flowers have become religious symbols of those same things.

Anyway, today, following Jesus’ call, I want to look closely again at the lilies of the field.

Well, actually, that’s not quite right because I want to look at the lilies, indeed, all flowers, in a way that helps us understand the profound meaning of the adverb ‘closely’. It is an aspect of Jesus’ teaching that is nearly always overlooked, yet it changes how we see everything.

We can spend so much time talking about what Jesus told us to look at, that we forget to examine how he asked us to look. I want to consider how looking closely changes things. It alters not only how we see the flower itself, but how we are shaped by the very act of paying attention.

I want to do this because, as a photographer, I have become acutely aware of how easily my own looking can stop being ‘close’. It usually happens the exact moment I realise I start looking for a ‘good photo’. Don’t get me wrong, a good photo of a flower is not a bad thing – but seeking it can, at least in my case, entirely short-circuit the kind of close looking Jesus was encouraging.

I arrived at this realisation a few weeks ago while revising a translation of a 1972 essay by Imaoka Shin’ichirō, called ‘The Invisible Church – The Religion of Humanism’. In that essay, he quotes a haiku by Bashō:

‘Looking closely,
A shepherd’s-purse
Is blooming under the hedge.’

よく見ればなずな花咲く垣根かな

When I read those lines by Bashō (see note 2 below), it struck me exactly what my use of the camera was encouraging me to do. It’s easy to forget that a camera isn’t simply a neutral piece of glass; it’s an agenda. But then, I simultaneously realised, so is a symbol. When we look at a flower as a symbol of, say, divine providence, we aren’t really looking at the flower. Our theology has already decided what the flower means before we even look. Like a camera, a symbol is a lens we place between ourselves and the world in order to capture a specific result. We are framing, we are composing, we are isolating. Sometimes that’s OK, but when it comes to one’s own religious or spiritual faith, it’s not.

And I think this is precisely what Imaoka-sensei realised about his own faith.

Earlier in his essay, he writes about how, as a young man, he embraced what he called a ‘well-ordered monotheism’. It gave him a neat, structured frame through which to view the universe. But eventually, he found it too restrictive. That ordered kind of theology – full of symbols and doctrines – was acting somewhat like a camera lens. It gave him a way to frame the divine, but it kept him separated from the deeper divine life with which he was trying to connect.

So, he put the lens down.

He began to let go of the well-ordered frameworks and began to engage with ‘polytheistic’, ‘pantheistic’, ‘atheist’ and ‘humanist’ ways of thinking which, over the years, eventually led him onto the free-religious path. On this path he began to realise that looking closely at the world – in the way Jesus and Bashō encouraged – requires as unobstructed a gaze as is humanly possible. To the best of his ability, he had to drop the agendas.

This is because, when you stop trying to frame God or the divine in a tidy theology, or the flower in a viewfinder, something shifts. You are finally free to look closely. And when you look closely at that tiny shepherd’s purse by the hedge, with as little as possible blocking your view, Imaoka-sensei felt that you no longer simply see a wildflower. Instead, you simultaneously begin to see the mysterious power of the cosmos – the ‘all-encompassing Great Life’ – blooming right there in the everyday soil. This is, to borrow from our Sunday liturgy, truly to see and appreciate the mystery and miracle of life. 

But he doesn’t stop at the shepherd’s purse under the hedge. He takes this unobstructed gaze and turns it directly towards our everyday lives asking: if we can learn to look closely at a flower without an agenda, what happens when we look at each other in the same way? He suggests that we begin to notice the ‘ordinary kindness’ that exists everywhere around us. The love between a parent and a child, the quiet support of a friend in a crisis, a stranger’s fleeting generosity. These are not just pleasant moments because, as Imaoka-sensei writes, if we seek out the source of even the smallest pure kindness, we find that same ‘Great Life’ flowing out salvifically into the world.

Salvation, in this sense, isn’t found in a Pure Land ten billion miles away, a Kingdom of God in the Heavens, or locked up in rigid agendas and theologies. It is something creative, active and mutual. It is something that happens in the relationships between us, right here and now, whenever we truly pay attention to one another.

In the final paragraph of his essay, Imaoka-sensei writes that we must realise we are all included within this total life – that at the deepest level, we are all connected. ‘To look closely at THIS’, he says, ‘is important.’

Why? Well, because if all humankind were to look closely – truly look, without the lenses and doctrines that divide us – a bond would inevitably form, or rather the bond that is always-already there would become visible. We would become aware of our returning-to-one (kiitsu) in a spiritual cooperative community. This is what Imaoka-sensei calls the ‘Invisible Church’. It isn’t a building you can photograph or represent with a single religious symbol or agenda. It is a living, ideal cooperative community, born from the simple, profound act of paying attention to each other and the world around us. It’s why, of course, the practice of meditation is so important.

And perhaps that is the deeper reason Jesus told us to look closely at the lilies of the field. Not simply so we could appreciate the flowers, but so we could better come to practise the kind of looking that, eventually, becomes the true foundation for the everlasting peace and salvation of humankind. Because by following the free-religious path, and recognising and paying attention to the Great Life in each other, everyone and everything comes to be ‘garbed like Solomon’ – and perhaps even in a glory greater still.

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Note 1

In the Gospels, Jesus’ instruction to ‘look closely’ or ‘consider’ the lilies relies on intensive Greek verbs. Matthew (6:28) uses katamanthanō (καταμανθάνω – to study or learn thoroughly), while Luke (12:27) uses katanoeō (κατανοέω – to perceive or observe carefully with the mind). Neither writer uses the ordinary word for a casual glance (see note 3 below); both words demand a deliberate, sustained, and deeply considered act of attention.

Note 2

The Japanese adverb yoku (よく) derives from the adjective yoi, meaning ‘good’. While it frequently translates simply as ‘well’, in Bashō’s phrase yoku mireba (よく見れば – literally ‘if one looks well’), it carries the nuance of looking with great care, thoroughness, and intentionality. It denotes an act of paying proper, sustained attention to something – like the humble shepherd’s purse – that the casual eye would otherwise easily miss.

Note 3

Blepō (βλέπω) This is the most basic, everyday word in the New Testament for the physical act of seeing or turning your eyes towards something. If you are simply passively looking at a flower as you walk past, or glancing at it without really engaging your brain, blepō is the word you would use. It denotes simple sight.

2. Horaō (ὁράω) / Eidon (εἶδον) This is the general verb in the New Testament for catching sight of something or perceiving it with the eye. It is the equivalent of simply saying ‘I saw a flower’.