Your Face

“God has given you one face,” said Shakespeare, “and you make yourselves another.”¹ A face isn’t just features and skin⎯it’s a soul, a mind, a heart put into form.”² Beauty is not only a matter of measurement and dimension, but also a radiance that shines from inside. Peace and happiness, trouble and sorrow are reflected in a face. “Make us see what we are,” wrote Celia Cole… “take off the veils from our eyes, faces, hearts, minds, souls…. veils of insincerity, selfishness,… ignorance, envy…. Let us be aware of the curious combination that makes a face beautiful or [merely] pretty or austere⎯the… hard look… the soft lovableness… or the face growing puffy and losing its light… because [of] self-indulgence or the face becoming tight and mean. Faces can be so hampered by their owners!… And looking out through them… is you.”² A photographer trying to capture a character said, “It isn’t just the form of your face. What we need is a picture of your personality⎯the inward interest⎯the light that looks out.” This is one difference between a plain, flat photo and a portrait that looks alive. Aside from form and feature, a face can be beautiful, warm, sincere, appealing, as it reflects goodness, peace, character, kindness, and a quiet conscience⎯or by contrast a face may be used as a mask to conceal a troubled interior or an unwholesome intent. As the boy in Hawthorne’s Great Stone Face, we tend to become like we live, to look like we live, to look like what we look at, like what we seek or accept. We tend to become like our thoughts, our hearts, our inner ideals. The faces of children reflect this in their honest innocence. Oh, let us help them hold to it by keeping the surroundings in which they live their lives, physically and morally clean. “God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another.”