Face to Face

(Photo by Lee Friedlander)

I was reminded today of how hard it is for me to look into people's faces. This lady, an esthetician, was waxing my mustache and eyebrows (just go with it) and she mentioned something about her own face. Without being able to look at her face because I was lying there with my eyes closed, I tried to visualize her face. It struck me that I hardly looked at her face as we walked in.

How sad (pronounced "SAA-yudd"), as we used to say to the misbehaving 4 year olds at the preschool where I used to teach.

I've thought of this subject many times before, because for a person so immersed in interpersonal contact my whole life, as in "a people person", it has always nagged me that I have such a hard time looking into eyes and taking in faces. I study faces closely (a.k.a. staring) when they're not looking at me, yet a face looking into my face is almost too much to bear.

So what is the deal, I am ever wondering. What has come to mind this time around are two things: shame and glory.

I realize that part of my difficulty looking into faces is shame. I am mean and messed up. I have shame. Shame makes me want to hide. So when I feel seen I hide my face by looking away and not meeting the other.

But what I haven't thought of until now is how much glory is in a face, and how that might further explain things. This week I got to go to my old hometown Bible study, which remains the most life-giving communal reading of Scripture I've known. This time we read Daniel 10, wherein Jesus appears to Daniel with a face of fire. Jesus does this more than once in Scripture (Rev. 1) and we talked about how this brilliant face of Jesus contrasts with the incarnate face of Jesus in the gospels, which is "toned down" enough for people to look into. In the gospels he is the incarnate face of love, yet his glory remains the same.

This got me thinking--maybe part of why it's hard to look into a face is because of the glory in a human face, the place where God's image is borne most intensely. This would make a little flinching and diverting understandable.

It would make sense, too, that another's glory (or shame) intensifies my shame, which again makes me divert. Yet I want to be able to take in another's glory with awe, gratitude, and love. It would help if my own shame could be resolved. All I can say is that it is resolving, and oozing, both at once, all the time. My glory, on the other hand, yes I know that is there as well.

What a strange alchemy is a true meeting of faces, a collision of glory on glory and shame on shame. It requires a certain bearing of my own shame and another's, my own glory and another's. No wonder it's not easy. Enter courage. Enter grace.