Face!

January 30th, 2021| Topic: RaMbLeS | 2

I have a patient whom I’ve taken care of for several years, ever since her elementary school days she would always come with a bystander. In the early days, it was always her mother. And I’ve gotten to know this parent quite well. Now a high-school senior, she brings a friend—always a new one every time. We even play a game: I walk into her room asking, “Who have you brought with you this time?”

Last week, I repeated my line as I walked in. “Yes, I have a friend,” she replied. After a few minutes of discussing her condition, I asked her how her mom was doing these days. And the “friend” sitting by replied, “I’m doing fine.” That new “friend” was her mother, whom I, not unexpectedly for these days, did not recognize behind her mask. We all had a good laugh.

But the fact is these pieces of fabric covering noses and mouths have really created distance. Smiles are veiled, faces are impassive, flatness of affect prevails. To my patients, I’m probably like a medieval plague doctor, who used to wear a long beaked mask to ward off infection. (I often take off my mask for a brief second or two as I walk into the room of a patient I’m seeing for the first time, just so they get to see my face.) Several of my older patients now also exhibit difficulties in understanding what I’m saying—they can’t read my lips!

And the masks! Flags, bandannas, hoods, quilts, skulls, animals, camouflage—all kinds of stuff. A profusion of carnivalesque proportions.

Wrote one physician:

In the year that COVID-19 killed trick-or-treating, Halloween escaped its bonds and flooded our entire season.”

Indeed.

What a world!

We are born hard-wired to recognize faces. Newborns can lock in on them, even if it is only a circle and a few of lines representing eyes, nose, and mouth. Even NASA’s 1976 Viking 1 photograph of a region of Mars called Cydonia was easily recognizable as a face, two miles from end to end, with shadows giving the illusion of eyes, nose, and mouth. It actually was only a mesa on the Red Planet. But the fact remains that we want to—nay, we will—see faces, given the vaguest of inputs.

But then these masks! Gone are the cues to identity, emotion, and even gender, age, and race.

As the new semester has begun at Dallas Seminary, I have trouble recognizing the masked visages of my students. To my embarrassment, more than once I’ve called out people using the wrong names.

But there is only one face worth looking at!

Your face, Yahweh, I seek.
Psalm 27:8

Make Your face to shine upon Your servant;
deliver me in Your lovingkindness.
Psalm 31:16

Indeed, that’s all we want—his face, his grace:

Face towards me and be gracious to me,
for alone and afflicted I am.
Psalm 25:16

I—in righteousness I shall behold Your face;
I will be satisfied, when I awake, with Your likeness.
Psalm 17:15

Often, the “face” of God stands for the divine presence.

For Yahweh is righteous,
righteousness He loves;
the upright will see His face.
Psalm 11:7

So much so, David wrote, as he asked for forgiveness:

Hide Your face from my sins, and my iniquities wipe away.
Do not dismiss me away from Your face.
Psalm 51:9, 11

Our only joy, God’s face!

You will make known to me the path of life;
fullness of joy [is with] Your face;
pleasures in Your right hand perpetually.
Psalm 16:11

SOURCES:
NASA Science; MedPage Today