FACES
/“How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
REMEMBER SCHOOL PICTURE DAY? Best shirt or dress, hair done, smile rehearsed and hope for the best. Ever wonder why the picture-taking tradition focused on a person's face? Why not a picture of the back of the head or the torso from the neck down? Because our face is who we are--with our unique smile, and eyes and nose and ears. Our face is us--our personhood, our humanness, our giftedness, the window to our character and personality.
my amazing missus
I was having a discussion years ago with a wise, wise friend. We were talking about discipline for kids. He said, "I'm not opposed to an occasional attention-getting swat on the bottom; BUT! NEVER, EVER SLAP OR HIT SOMEONE ACROSS THE FACE! To slap someone in the face is to take their worth and value. It sends a message of disgust, ugliness and even hate."
To be faceless is to be invisible and less than human. I wrote a piece a while back and mentioned the masks that are worn as a part of the costume of ICE agents hunting down humans in the name of a mission to remove the worst of the worst. I bring it up again here to say that I believe that by wearing a mask these agents somehow take on a different persona: a tougher, less tolerant, insensitive, no-nonsense, macho, zealous version, like those who wore the white pointy hats and robes of the cross burners. Maybe they are really that way. Or; maybe without all the garb and gear, behind the mask, he's just a guy, trying to do the right thing and make a living. "Hide my FACE and no one can see me." I guess sometimes the mask has a dual purpose: hides identity and shame.
I watched the hearing the other day of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in front of a House Committee. In the seats behind her sat a number of the victims of the pedophilia ring of convicted child-sex offenders Epstein and Maxwell. Bondi was made aware of the fact that the victims were sitting right behind her. She was invited to offer a word to them or at least turn around and acknowledge them. She wouldn't do it. Why? Because if she had they would have had faces--they would have become real people to her and she did not want that. She had planned her course for the hearing and she couldn't execute the plan if she felt any empathy at all. So, just ignore them, don't look at them, totally dehumanize them so that you can continue the cover up the nightmare that stole so much of their personhood. It was the equivalent of a slap across the face of each one of them.
“No man can be an exile if he remembers that all the world is one city.”