There is something invisible here as you read this. You can’t see it but it is here.
It needs to be invisible or else you would not see this to read it.
Do you trust me to know that I am telling you the truth?
You may not know me. How can you trust me?
I didn’t learn what is invisible here, in school. When I finished school this didn’t exist. I didn’t learn it in any formal method of education.
I do know I learnt it sometime in the last 20 years. I can’t remember when exactly I saw it for the first time, but when I did, I knew that I needed to learn and understand it.
By trial and error, like other things in life, I learnt what it could do. I saw how others were using it and how it was helping them. I watched what they were doing and learnt from them. I copied them. However, I didn’t like it very much and I left it alone. I thought I could manage fine without it.
Sometime later I learnt that infact it had been a mistake to ignore it. I realised I was missing out on something that would make my life so much better and easier.
So what is invisible… here?
For you to see the word ‘invisible’ here, the css* markup language; ‘p {color: #000; font-family: ‘Muli’, sans-serif; font-size: 1.8rem; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.625;}’ must be present and delivered from a web server to the web browser you are using to enable you to see the word ‘invisible’ on this web page, in this ‘Thought for the Week’.
But, you may ask? as I’m reading this on [insert as applicable] my mobile phone, my tablet, my PC, my Mac (oh, look at you!), a printed sheet of paper that [insert as applicable] I, my son, my daughter, my niece, my nephew, my grandchild, my better half printed out from the computer, do I really need to see and understand all this to see it?.. and what is a web browser?.. what is a web server?
No, you don’t need to see and understand it to see it. (I have also left out all the other code that needs to be present and to work to make this web page visible, along with the complex network code of web servers and browser technology, but you don’t need to see or understand that either.)
The point is, the invisible needs to be present to make what you see here, visible.
Can you see?
We don’t really need to see what makes what we see, visible. If we did, we wouldn’t see what there is to see.
Come Holy Spirit.
*cascading style sheet… in case you are interested. Image of Ladybird photographed in the meadow at the Holm, Moville, Co Donegal.
Tony Brennan is the Pastoral Development Coordinator for the Diocese of Derry and National Coordinator of the Pope John Paul II Award. (Has been known to design and build the odd website or two!)
