Stereoscopic Vision

Seeing Three-Dimensionally with Kate Holbrook

I wish I had the opportunity to talk to Kate Holbrook about vision. Kate’s left eye was removed when a tumor tore her retina, and my eyes do not work together effectively. Both of us have experienced challenges with binocular vision, although for different reasons. The onset of my double vision raised practical and spiritual questions, and I wondered what Kate experienced as she transitioned to monocular vision. If we had had the opportunity to sit together on a bench in her garden, I would have asked: What does it feel like to use one eye instead of two? What has changed in your spatial orientation and your relationship to your body? 

In 2019, Kate shared publicly: “Losing an eye was rough, it turned out, but also really lucky because the cancer hadn’t spread. This was seven years ago. Doctors had warned me that ‘enucleation’ was a big surgery with a long recovery. . . . I ended up having three surgeries over several months” and needed to “regain my balance and relearn to drive.” From this glimpse, her transition to living with one eye sounds miserably tough.

As my visual perception changed, I wondered about a correlation between my physical sight and my spiritual insight. So many scriptures link visual impairment with sinfulness and moral failings. For example, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matt. 6:22–23, NRSV). What do these scriptural analogies mean for someone experiencing physical visual impairment? 

I did not have the opportunity to ask Kate my questions and share my worries. It was not until after she died in 2022 and I was coordinating the editorial and production teams working to publish her book of essays that I discerned insight about vision within the organizing theme of her title, Both Things Are True. Rosalynde Welch elaborates in the prologue: “Kate shows how a covenant life can be lived in the open space between contrary ideas that are equally valid but independently incomplete. When we learn to hold true things together in their natural tension, we find our hearts and souls stretched wide.” Perhaps losing the capacity to see a three-dimensional image fused from views of both eyes gave Kate insight about perceiving truths in tension. Kate’s encouragement to discern “both things are true” teaches me ways to make sense of the embodied, social, and spiritual tensions I experience as a Latter-day Saint single adult.

The dysfunction I have experienced with my binocular vision has generated two analogies that relate to the dysfunction I experience with the communal vision of my faith community. First, some background about how human vision works. Binocular vision involves input from two eyes. Human eyes are separated by a short distance, so each eye sees a slightly different image, and the brain fuses the visual input from both eyes to create a single three-dimensional image. Difference in visual input is necessary for stereoscopic (3D) vision, but too much difference will result in suppression (in children) or double vision (in adults). The disorientation of double vision reminds me of the disorientation I have experienced as a single adult in a church focused on nuclear families.

In my early forties, my vision changed. I started losing my place while reading, then words began doubling and crowding my field of vision. Eventually, I saw two books in my hand even though my fingers felt only one. The disconnect between my sense of sight and sense of touch was destabilizing. I could no longer rely on what I was seeing, and I did not know what was causing the double vision. I should note that if you ever experience the sudden onset of double vision, you should seek immediate medical attention, but in the spring of 2020, most offices were closed indefinitely at the onset of the pandemic. Amid this uncertainty, my mind tried to make meaning. I worried that if my physical senses were unreliable, then my spiritual perceptions might likewise be vulnerable to dysfunction and impairment. My worry intensified when I realized that the disorientation of the doubling of images in my field of vision felt familiar. I realized that I had been experiencing double vision in my belonging to the Church. The married life I was expected to live hovered alongside the single life I was living.

My physical and spiritual disorientation intensified when I was eventually referred to the ophthalmology clinic at Primary Children’s Hospital. I had internalized the idea that an adult knows how to take care of herself and others, but there I was in an exam room designed for children—a dancing dog in the corner and a butterfly painted on the wall—being cared for by clinicians my own age or younger because I was losing control of coordinating my eyes, a basic visual milestone most infants reach by about four months. I had learned in Primary that God’s plan for women is to become mothers, but there I was in the Primary’s hospital as a patient not a parent. Was I a physically and spiritually stunted child who had failed to mature?

Even though I was feeling inadequate about my capacities as an adult, Primary Children’s was the right place for me to go to be diagnosed and treated with dignity. A pediatric ophthalmologist told me that I had developed strabismus (my ocular muscles had become misaligned, and one eye was drifting from its normal position) and convergence insufficiency (my eyes were not coordinating to focus on near objects). I was seeing two images when my eyes were not aimed at the same target.

Double vision is disastrous for a literature professor who reads for a living. Three and a half years after the onset of double vision, which had persisted despite medical and surgical interventions, I met with my ophthalmologist. It was the end of a semester, and I was feeling discouraged—I had hundreds of pages of student papers to grade, hundreds of pages of book manuscripts to edit, and hundreds of pages of scholarship to read. My ophthalmologist reminded me that he could only address the periphery of the visual processing system, and he acknowledged that multiple interventions were not resolving what seemed to be dysfunction somewhere deeper in this intricate and complex system. We had tried vision exercises to train my ocular muscles to work together, multiple glasses to correct refractive errors at different distances, surgical adjustment of ocular muscles, and prisms to improve convergence. 

It was a relief to have this candid conversation. Adjusting expectations diffused some discouragement, and I appreciated his humility. Then he proposed a new plan. His plan valued my comfort and communicated that I was worthy of care regardless of whether my vision issues could be resolved. After the appointment, I hunched inside my coat waiting for a train, tears seeping into my collar. 

I felt cared for. As the train car rumbled into downtown Salt Lake City, I wished my religious community treated my body with as much care. My ophthalmologist did not tell me that I was selfish for delaying treatment. He did not tell me that I was lazy by saying, “Surely you could control your eyes like everyone else if you tried harder.” He did not dismiss my present challenges by saying, “Wait faithfully, and in the next life you will be rewarded with a fully functioning visual processing system.” Nor did he judge me by saying, “Because you are choosing a lower form of vision today, you will not be prepared for a higher form of vision in the next life.”

A compassionate doctor would not tell a patient these things, yet these are all messages I have heard from the pulpit directed at unmarried adults. Are such messages any more appropriate for people whose mortal bodies may have varying capacities, capabilities, and opportunities for creating nuclear families? 

Currently, the Church Handbook describes me as “not yet married.” Much of the time I feel like the married life I was supposed to live is truer than the life I am living. My expected life hovers on the horizon of my lived experience much as the disparate images from my right and left eyes crowd my field of vision. Trying to fuse these two life trajectories seems as futile as trying to fuse input from both eyes. I want my life to be more than “not yet.” I wish my religious community empowered me to perceive myself as flourishing in the life, body, and relationships I am blessed with today. 

I felt a bit hopeful in 2021 when Elder Gong assured single members unsure of their place in the Latter-day Saint community that “our standing before the Lord and in His Church is not a matter of our marital status but of our becoming faithful and valiant disciples of Jesus Christ.” The Jesus we meet in scripture lived an abundant mortal life without creating a biological family. Jesus ministered with friends and proclaimed, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). If Jesus’s single life was true, could mine be as well? 

Over the years, I have come to peace with going to Primary Children’s Hospital as an adult. Walking past the motto, “The Child First and Always,” helps me remember that I am a child of God. This knowledge gives me hope that my relationship with my Heavenly Parents is not contingent on whether a human man wants to spend his life with me. It also gives me hope that my Heavenly Parents created my body with its particular variability, vulnerability, and capacity to grow and form meaningful relationships.

It is hard to hold onto this hope without the support of my faith community, which brings me to my second visual analogy. When a child receives significantly different images from each eye, visual input from one eye gets suppressed. This visual phenomenon is like the suppression of the perspective of single members in a faith community led by married leaders. Our communal vision in the Church is functionally monocular—we are not seeing three-dimensionally. Collectively, we are only seeing from the perspective of married members of the community, and we are suppressing the perspective of single members. I am not suggesting that this suppression is malicious—it is structural. The majority of local leaders and approaching one hundred percent of leaders above the stake level are married. Married leaders make the decisions for the body of the Church based on their life experiences. Led by married leaders, the Church has worked out a clear trajectory for living righteously in a married partnership, but the trajectory for living righteously as an individual is blurry. Unsurprisingly the Church has acted like a child when confronted with a clear image from one eye and a blurry image from the other: the blurry input is suppressed.

I experienced this as a child. In first grade, vision screening tests revealed that I had amblyopia—there was a significant difference in clarity between the visual input from my right and left eyes. I was completely unaware that my brain was suppressing the blurry image from my left eye. A pediatric ophthalmologist explained to my parents that if my visual networks matured while ignoring input from my left eye, my capacity to interpret visual stimuli from that eye would diminish and probably would cease. He prescribed patching my dominant eye for multiple hours a day so that my brain would learn to respond to input from the blurry eye. I patched through fifth grade. 

Over years of patching, my brain learned how to recognize visual input from both eyes, and I developed my capacity for perceiving three dimensions. I believe that our church community has the same potential. To stimulate binocular balance, I think we need to do what I did as a child—we need to patch consistently. The Church experienced a dose of communal patching in 2021 when two General Conference talks and a Face-to-Face Broadcast directed the attention of married members to experiences of single members. However, this communal patching had a limited impact because it was not sustained.

In 2021, Church leaders announced that “the majority of adult Church members are now unmarried, widowed, or divorced.” Neglecting the perspective of the majority of the adults in the church results in a profound communal deficit and lack of understanding. If you are married, how might you “patch” your married perspective? I invite you to talk to single adults in your ward. Get to know them as human beings. They do not need to be pitied, feared, or fixed. They need the kind of care that my ophthalmologist gave me. If you are a leader, learn about their spiritual gifts. Pray for inspiration about how their spiritual gifts could enrich your ward community. Invite them to participate in decision-making councils and callings. We will not know what our ward communities are missing until we experience their contributions. If you need ideas or courage to engage in these conversations, listen to episodes of podcasts, such as The Soloists at Faith Matters or All Out in the Open. If you work with youth, acknowledge that not all will marry, even if that is their goal. Sharon Eubank told young single adults at an area conference that “marriage isn’t the rite of passage into mature discipleship in this Church,” the rite of mature discipleship “is the endowment.” Over time with a greater variety of perspectives, maybe our community will see more clearly the value and honor of individual discipleship.

To validate the lives of single members of the Church, I think we collectively would need to recognize that all of us chose mortality and that our mortal bodies have significant variation and vulnerability. By divine design, we have different physical abilities, emotional capacities, and social opportunities. These differences should not prevent social fusion. 

In a human body, stereoscopic vision is possible because each eye generates slightly different images of the same object. Perceiving three dimensions requires difference. The scientist who discovered this process realized that “the difference in viewing perspective between our two eyes is not an imperfection. Instead, this difference provides us with stereopsis, or a depth-filled way of seeing the world.” Spiritual stereopsis likely works analogously. I believe that every child of God manifests a unique aspect of our divine parents. Veiled as we are in mortality, to see God we must discern the divine in each other, for together we create a divine mosaic as the family of God. Could individuals be deemed worthy of belonging in our faith community right now, not when they have ideal bodies and relationships?  If we could collectively develop the spiritual capacity to perceive an individual’s life to be as true as a partnered life, we may find our communal vision expanded.

Even though Kate lost her capacity for physical binocularity and stereopsis, she continued to believe that our faith community has the potential to expand the way we relate to each other. She writes about how fidelity to a covenant community involves holding true things together in their natural tension; this tension includes the differences among members of the community. 

I believe there is something aspirational about calling this Church true. We members have a commission to make it true. We should try to make it true by being true to one another. It will take work to be true. I believe we experience this aspirational dimension of truth in the Church when we forgive each other, are present with each other, and serve each other with fidelity. As we follow God’s commandment to care for each other, our wards become true vehicles for God’s love and grace, binding us to one another even more firmly. The Church is true in the sense that it holds revealed truth and saving ordinances. And in another sense, in an ongoing relational sense, the Church will become true as we make our relationships true. 

Persistent hope and courage fuse these truths-in-tension into three-dimensional unity. As we ready our community to perceive a full stereoscopic vision of adult experience, we prepare ourselves for a vision that fuses the differences between partnered and individual lives into a fuller comprehension of God’s family.

Miranda Wilcox is an associate professor of English at Brigham Young University and a scholar of medieval Christianity.

Art by Kirsten Holt Beitler.