Saturday, January 4, 2014

What of a face?


I've been looking at faces. It was a Monday night about a month ago, someone was talking, telling a story, interesting no doubt, but all I could focus on were the lines that creased her forehead, the way she looked into her lap when she laughed, self-conscious, eyebrows rising toward her hair, the nervous way a small dimple kept appearing above her lip.

What of a face? I can't help but think of those words from Gilead, that we can know one another, but there might still be nothing between us but "loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension." Mutual incomprehension. It's those words that get me, that I think of every time I get the chance to really look at someone. There are oceans between us, disparate and complex interior lives, we are separated by physical space and the limitations of individual consciousness. But with that, what of a face? Surely something can be gained here, a hazy comprehension at best. It is not without reason that we face outward, that we are creased and lined by experience and time, that our stories are written not only on the underside of our skin, in the hidden chambers, but also in the curve of our mouth, the weight and steadiness of our gaze.

We are angles and planes, curves and plinths, hewn from stone, from dust, desire is written into the tangle of our limbs, the vast spaces between atoms that make up our tenuous being. If we really looked at each other, what would we find? Could we break down some of that mutual incomprehension? I can't attempt it too often, because of the weight of it. I am too affected maybe, weak. I want to catch all the pain, all the joy, everything in between that breathes and glides, the moments that give rondure to our linear lives.

Jesus sees, reads our lines, sculpted this shape. His sight is deeper than vision, of course, pierces to where sinew meets bone, the root of the root. How deep can he go? What story does my face tell? Yours? Maybe it is only the poets among us who can read them. And I am at Keats now, "the poetry of earth is never dead." The poetry of our faces, it breathes, it glides. I watch my daughter while she sleeps, and even then, I see it.

We prepare a face, to meet the faces that we meet. I prepare a face, to meet the faces that I meet. Do I dare, and do I dare? This is our story, isn't it? The consequence of a perfect world torn asunder, veiling and unveiling in turn. I am good at it, perhaps not a master, but I pass through this world, seen and unseen.

Then there's this hymn. We sang it on this same Monday night. What you've just read, I started writing it while I sang, bent low over the notebook on my knees.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in his beautiful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of his glory and grace

I wish I could have looked into his real, actual face. It is one of the deepest desires I know. To see him here, on our splintered earth, mending, redeeming, laughing, weeping. What lines creased his brow? The shape of his nose, the height of his cheekbones, the childhood scars that marked him. Why, I have often wondered, did the Gospel writers not tell us what he looked like? It would have been so easy. Could there have been a line drawing penciled in the margins of those ancient scrolls, but it did not make it into the sacred book. Too trivial, for the doubting among us, who want to see with our eyes and know with our senses.

So I'm sitting here, wondering how I can turn my eyes upon a face I have never seen. And I know it's not so literal as that, that this relationship goes deeper than sense, that I turn my eyes upon his whole person, more than a face. His face, I can imagine; his character, I know.  But a glimpse, a glimpse of something seen. The longing rings out like a sustained note, like a strangled sigh, a knot at the base of my throat, a bell at my ribcage.

God Incarnate. What in the world did you look like?

The mutual incomprehension, I have never fully breached it with anyone else, but with him, I wonder if it would have disappeared. His face, the question and the answer, unveiled and unveiling, seen and seeing. Would I have lived to tell the tale, or burned right up, soot and cinder, ashes and poetry? It's a valid question, I think.