Tag: gaze

God’s Righteous Frown: With Steady Gaze

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Directly in front of me
he is here,
him on this quiet morning
in a room of the Byzantine Museum, Athens,
in the hundred-degree heat and dust
of a city not yet fully awake.
Here, and I am suddenly confronted—
the oldest icon in existence—with
his image.

The rest of the room evaporates,
and all I see is him:
Pure mystery, great and wondrous,
dizzying and terrible.

How can wood and pigment
egg yolk and animal skin convey
such ethereal truth,
intensify the power,
captivate Christian eye and heart?

Christ of Sinai looks at me
with steady gaze.
His eyes—the famed twins
Justice and Mercy—
see straight through me
piercing the whitewashed tomb
of my exterior till it hurts.
One eye is dark, foreboding
shadows between the brow and lid
deepening and on the verge of righteous anger—
the other eye embraces all
even my unworthy soul.
I stand and cannot pray. My eyes swell with tears.
I cannot look anymore.
~Ed Higgins from “Icon: Christ of Sinai” from Near Truth Only 

Icon of Christ Pantocrator

I was not raised with religious icons. I have little understanding about how they may comfort and encourage those who value and even worship them. Yet I do understand inspiring art and words may deepen our faith in God. This has been true for millennia.

This particular Byzantine icon, the oldest known of Christ, is preserved from the 6th century, an early representation with an intense gaze from eyes that are both from man and God.

I look for tears in those eyes. My own fill up knowing Christ is able to see the depths beyond my white-washed exterior.

I look away, ashamed.

Because He sees what we try to keep from Him, Jesus weeps,
knowing the truth about us, yet loving us anyway.

the right and left sides of the icon shown in mirror image, illustrating the dual nature of divine and human

You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.
Matthew 23:27

Detail from “Descent from the Cross” by Rogier van der Weyden

This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”

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That Look

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She raised her face, shining, and found her mirror in <his> eyes. I saw them look at each other, and felt the tears prickle behind my lids.
~Diana Gabaldon from Voyager

I leaned over his shoulder now and deposited a bowl of oatmeal in front of him, a smile hiding in his eyes, caught my hand and kissed it lightly. He let me go, and went back to his parritch. I touched the back of his neck, and saw the smile spread to his mouth. 
     I looked up, smiling myself, and found Brianna watching. One corner of her mouth turned up, and her eyes were warm with understanding. Then I saw her gaze shift to Roger, who was spooning in his parritch in an absentminded sort of way, his gaze intent on her.
~Diana Gabaldon from Drums of Autumn

from Outlander (Starz)




…she had ventured only one glance…she raised her eyes to his face…
…their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of each were overspread with the deepest blush..
~Jane Austen from Pride and Prejudice
from Pride and Prejudice (BBC production)

Occasionally books and movies get it right.  If they really want to show two people in love with each other, it does not require states of undress, or acrobatic clinches, or lots of heavy breathing.

All the movie needs is “that look”.

Some call it “locked eyes” or the “the held intense gaze” or “gazing longingly”.   It’s not ogling or lurid or lusty.  

It is the look that confirms: “I want to look into your eyes forever and stay lost there.”

It works for me every time because I am lucky enough to know what it feels like.  I get that butterfly in the stomach feeling anytime it happens.  My husband held my eyes with his from across a room early in our relationship, and forty years later, he still holds them when he looks at me.  And I look at him just that way as well.  The eyes say what there are no words for.  The eyes don’t lie, being both mirror and reflection, as they are portal to both the mind and heart.  The eyes never change even though the years bring gray hair and crow’s feet.

The “look” says “I want to look at you forever, just like this, just as you are, wherever you are — because of who you are.”

from Outlander

A Bright Sadness: The Anguish of Earth

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The pain and tears of all the years were met together on Calvary. The sorrow of heaven joined with the anguish of earth; the forgiving love stored up in God’s future was poured out into the present; the voices that echo in a million human hearts, crying for justice, longing for spirituality, eager for relationship, yearning for beauty, drew themselves together into a final scream of desolation.
~N.T. Wright from Simply Jesus

To live coram Deo is to live one’s entire life
in the presence of God,
under the authority of God,
to the glory of God.

To live in the presence of God is to understand that whatever we are doing and wherever we are doing it, we are acting under the gaze of God.

To live all of life coram Deo is to live a life of integrity.

It is a life of wholeness that finds its unity and coherency in the majesty of God.

It is a life that is open before God.
It is a life in which all that is done is done as to the Lord.
It is a life lived by principle, not expediency;
by humility before God, not defiance.
It is a life lived under the tutelage of conscience that is held captive by the Word of God.
~R.C. Sproul

As millions watched and wept over the burning of a venerated cathedral built to the glory of God, we must remember even this anguish happened under the gaze of God. Our sorrow over a building destroyed is trivial compared to the loss felt during Christ’s suffering and death.

The temporal ashes of the Notre Dame Cathedral mix now with our own mortal ashes. We have been redeemed through no action of our own. Our debt has been paid out of Christ’s sheer grace and love.

As we walk together with our Christian brothers and sisters through Holy Week and beyond into the holiness of every day, may we remain under the gaze of God, under the authority of God, open before God, captivated by the Word of God.

We see the gaping hole in the ceiling of a great cathedral just as we witness the open hole of Christ’s tomb: whatever we do, wherever we do it, it is to be in His name, to His glory, under His Holy gaze.

Coram Deo.


An Unblinking Gaze

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goldenmorning1013181

 

 

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Of all the beasts that God allows
In England’s green and pleasant land,
I most of all dislike the Cows:

Their ways I do not understand.
It puzzles me why they should stare
At me, who am so innocent;
Their stupid gaze is hard to bear —

To country people 
Cows are mild, 
And flee from any stick they throw; 
But I’m a timid town bred child, 
And all the cattle seem to know.
~from “Cows” by T.S. Eliot, published long after his death

 

 

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Raised with Guernsey and Jersey cows
outside my back door,
I sat dreamily
on their bony backs
while dad milked by hand twice a day,
the rhythmic
swoosh swoosh
filling the metal pail
as barn cats circled and purred.

Giving up the dairy,
we raised Scottish Highlanders
of long horn and shaggy hair-
wild and skeptical creatures
who barely tolerated a curry comb
or rub behind the ears.

I know well the unblinking stare of the cow
as they chew their cud and lick their nostrils;
I love their unending interest
in the absurdity
of people,
watching what we do.

I fall
into the deep pool
of their brown eyes
and drown
there willingly,
anchored
by their curious gaze
and why they should choose to care
about me
at all.

 

 

chestnutcows

 

fieldcows9517

Seen Through at a Glance

barnstormingblog6 Comments

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homereyes2

 

…whenever you mark a horse, or a dog,
with a peculiarly mild, calm, deep-seated eye,
be sure he is an Aristotle or a Kant,
tranquilly speculating upon the mysteries in man. 
No philosophers so thoroughly comprehend us as dogs and horses.
They see through us at a glance.
But there is a touch of divinity ….
and a special halo about a horse…
~Herman Melville from Redburn: His First Voyage

 

wallyeye

 

There are some animals (and people) who will not look you in the eye.  It may be a reluctance to appear too bold, as direct eye contact can imply, or it may be a reluctance to expose too much of their own inner world and feelings.

Because eyes don’t lie.

But when you can empty yourself into another being’s eyes and feel both understanding and understood, that is a touch of divinity at work.  The eye is a mirror, a gazing ball and a collecting pool, and we reveal,  reflect and absorb when we really take the time and gather the courage to look deeply into one another.

 

homerlook

 

sashaeye

 

Our Eyes Locked…

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tonyeye

joseeye

homer1052

The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.

Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don’t. We keep our skulls. So.
~Annie Dillard from “Living Like Weasels”

I watch you.  And you me.  Our eyes locked and someone threw away the key.

gooseeye

bobbieeye

sashaeye

homerlook

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samlooksteensmakestrel

Perfected Stare

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Of all the beasts that God allows
In England’s green and pleasant land,
I most of all dislike the Cows:
Their ways I do not understand.
It puzzles me why they should stare
At me, who am so innocent;
Their stupid gaze is hard to bear —

To country people
Cows are mild,
And flee from any stick they throw;
But I’m a timid town bred child,
And all the cattle seem to know.
~from “Cows” by T.S. Eliot, published long after his death

Raised with cows
outside my back door,
I sat dreamily
on their bony backs
while dad milked,
the rhythmic
swoosh swoosh
filling the metal pail
as barn cats circled and purred.

The perfected stare of the cow;
I love
their unblinking interest
in the absurdity
of people and
what we do.

I fall
into the deep pool
of their brown eyes
and drown
there willingly,
anchored
by their curious gaze
and why they should care
about me
at all.