REV. STEVEN FORTENBERRY Gorillas in our midst are good news we miss

If you were watching a basketball game and a gorilla walked right across the court, would you notice? Well, in one study, 50 percent of the participants failed to notice a person in a gorilla suit strolling across the court. How could this be?
Scientists have been researching the mind's ability to process everything that our eyes see and discovered that we can't necessarily process or notice everything on our visual screen.
Dr. Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois and Christopher Chabris of Harvard University conducted the gorilla experiment. They videotaped a handful of people playing basketball. Then, they played the tape to subjects and asked them to count the passes made by one of the teams.
During the tape, a woman in a gorilla suit walked across the court, through the players, and even thumped her chest while facing the camera. About half of the people, who were busy counting the passes, failed to spot the gorilla! Yet, when other participants were just asked to watch the tape, everyone spotted the gorilla.
Voices everywhere
This study shows how we easily we can miss the obvious if we are distracted by other things, and being distracted is the norm for us in this information age. At the end of any given day, hundreds of voices have vied for our attention: politicians saying how bad things are and how they can fix them, or politicians saying how good things are but how they will go downhill if you choose the other candidate.
In the May 10 edition of The Christian Science Monitor, Mike Dash, a management consultant to the high-tech industry, gave his assessment of the main themes we hear: "A tremendous amount of the information out there comes down to two statements: One of these is, 'You're deficient.' And the other is, 'If you buy this, it will fix that.'"
While we are being asked to count the negative things on the court of life, what gorilla is walking across the court unnoticed?
Philip Yancey, in this month's issue of Christianity Today, cites several "gorillas" few are noticing: Thirty years ago, the global literacy rate was 53 percent; now, only 20 percent of adults cannot read. The percentage of people suffering from malnutrition has dropped by more than half, to 20 percent. Formerly, three of four people had no access to clean water; now, three of four people have it. In the last decade, abortions have declined by half.
Even in the Mahoning Valley, gorillas stroll through our streets and neighborhoods. Are we too distracted to notice?
Eyes on the good
The following words of the inspired writer of much of the New Testament, the Apostle Paul, seem to be the cure for gorilla blindness:
"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable -- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy -- think about such things" (Philippians 4:8).
XThe Rev. Steven Fortenberry is pastor of a new church, Common Ground Community Church. Visit its Web site at http://ww2.commongroundcommunity.net:9876.