….Christ plays in ten thousand places, 

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his 

To the Father through the features of men’s faces. 

G.M. Hopkins, As Kingfishers Catch Fire

What is a face? When you think of a face, you may first think of a physical object, an arrangement of features. Its eyes are said to be windows through which we may glimpse the soul, something beyond the material world. From its mouth come words that can kill or give life, curse or bless; from its lips may emerge the mystery of song. The human face is an invention along with the human body and the rest of creation. But, what makes the face what it is is a reality beyond the physical that manifests through it. The face is a chink through which passes the sunlight of personhood from the vast outdoors of Reality into the garden toolshed of human experience.

Gerard Manley Hopkins may have said all I’d like to say in his poem, As Kingfishers Catch Fire. He describes how each mortal thing “deals out that being indoors each one dwells – selves”, and he lands this whole idea on the last word of the poem: faces. The instant a kingfisher emerges from the water to catch the fire of the sunlight and flickers for one bright moment, we see a brief glimpse of a face from beyond nature crossing the threshold of creation.  

A few nights ago, I sat by a campfire in Wisconsin as the Milky Way emerged above me through the dark pine crowns. A constant thrum of cricket and frog voices melded with the crackle of branches amidst the embers. The Mississippi River, early in its long journey down past my home state to the gulf, below conscious hearing, whispered in the night not far away.  I sang quietly before going to bed, “Praise Him, all creatures here below.” 

If Hopkins is right, then everything God has made, by “acting in God’s eye what in God’s eye [it] is” manifests in this world something of God’s immaterial ‘face’.  And God has invented in the human face a wondrous resting place – a habitation – for his glory. In its features, Hopkins says, we see Christ at play to the Father’s glory and for his revealing. Ultimately, this truth is fully realized in Jesus, where we discover, “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 

“Face”, then, is an uncreated relational reality from ‘before all worlds’; the incarnation of Jesus and its consummation in him is the deepest fulfillment of the human face. The members of the Trinity face one another: Jesus is the son because he faces the Father, and so on. To turn and face the God who is facing us in Jesus Christ is to be ratified; to see him seeing us is to learn to see ourselves truly, as well as to be given our true self in Him and in the shining light of his face.  And what is a shining face? It is a face that is bright with the gladness of a smile. 

The Samaritan woman at the well experienced such a shock of discovery by the end of her conversation with Jesus in John chapter four. What did she see in his face? I wonder, because once she’d seen it, everything changed for her. Exploring that encounter at Jacob’s Well is the focus of the album I’m recording right now called “Only the lover sings”. 

That title comes from St. Augustine, and the chorus of the title track says, Only the one who dares to look the Lord full-on in the face finds out the shocking good news. The Samaritan Woman, after finding God’s face turned in love toward her, drops her jar and runs off knocking on doors, singing, “the Messiah has come!” She is astonished to discover she is the Lord’s beloved. With all I’ve done and been through, how can it be? Isn’t it always a shock to turn toward God, bracing ourselves for the worst like the returning prodigal, only to find God’s face bright with joy at our approach? 

The woman at the well is lit like a candle and she goes door to door singing, “the Lord has made the light of his face to shine upon us. Come and see!”  And her story is our story too.

In his book “The Face of God”, Roger Scruton says the face is a threshold over which passes into the immanent material world the transcendent immaterial personal presence. You search a face to discover whether you’re looking at a thing or a person. Here, says Thomas Howard, “the distinction between spirit and matter disappears, as it does in the Sacraments. For here I experience the oddity that flesh is the mode under which I apprehend the truth of the thing. It is the epiphany of the thing… the human body is the epiphany of personhood.”

When I look at a giraffe,  I can see traces of God’s personality; “Someone has been here,” I say to myself laughing, though the animal itself is not a person. But with a human, I say, “Someone has been here, and someone is, in fact, here!” The Creator God has left his coinage, and a new person stands before me. 

We see that face across all that he has made and given, in all of creation and in the Church’s Sacraments. Even humanity’s experience of sex is a shadow analogy of the real appearance of Jesus to his Bride, by which the bride’s true personhood and humanity are ratified and realized. “When he appears we shall be like him” means that we will finally be really and truly human. 

Recently, my friend Jessie, who walked the Camino in Spain, told me that her favorite Spanish word is mirada, which means “the look in one’s eyes.” Often a single word can germinate into a rich range of connotations. I wondered whether Jessie’s favorite word might branch out in some fruitful ways with regard to the idea of facing.  And lo and Behold (as we say in the South), it did! 

It turns out that mirar sprouts out into: mirror, miracle, wonder, even to look and to contemplate, to regard, to smile or laugh. I got excited watching this one word harmonizing so many ideas across this essay. Now, hold mirar one hand, and open your palm to hold another word: gentleness. 

Gentleness is a word that has to do with inheriting the likeness of those from whom you were generated: your parents. Gene– is the root of genesis, generate, generations, genteel, gentle. These are words about origins, birth and family patterns. Gentleness is handed down by birth and fostered by family. Maybe it’s a basket-word that cradles all kinds of good family fruit. We are made in God’s image; called his sons and daughters; gentleness means to bear the family likeness as we carry on the patterns of loving as we have been loved. 

In one hand mirar; in the other, gentleness… 

Mirar: When we turn to face Jesus, then we have beheld ‘the look in God’s eyes’ toward us. Seeing his face mirrors back to us the truth about who and what we really are. Something we thought was impossible suddenly becomes wondrously, miraculously possible: new birth from apparent barrenness into God’s Family.  Enter gentleness… 

Gentleness: When we turn to face Jesus in faith, we are re-generated (born again) into a new family. The Word who became flesh and dwelt among us makes available for us a new generative reality. Each of us is faced with the miracle of a second genesis, where we are forgiven in the light of his face and called “very good” again. God offers this gladdening light to us, and like a candle lighting a candle, we offer it to each other and the world as we face others with the reality that God has made his face to shine upon us and that shining face is Jesus Christ himself.

Closing Prayer

Lord, “with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light”. But, though we are thirsty like the woman at the well, we are afraid to turn from darkness and face your shining face. Maybe because your light is a light that reveals even as it heals, and we are afraid to face ourselves and be seen by you. What if it’s a trap door and you don’t really love us? But, Lord, your face is bright with delight over every prodigal that turns toward the father’s house. Give us the courage to answer your proposal, to look you full-on in the face, where we will be astonished to discover that you are looking upon us with delight, claiming us as your Beloved. Oh Lord Jesus, to see you seeing us in love is the only thing that can truly set us free. Help us to turn our faces to you and trust in your love for us. Amen.