please?
In the faces of men and women I see God, said Walt Whitman, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d.
You needn’t believe in any particular god to be sensitive to the truth in Whitman’s claim. You needn’t believe that the letters are signed to accept that the letters exist, and that every face you see is a grand epistle communicating something about the person behind the face.
Take this face. The pose is almost sinister…dark, half-hidden in the shadow, reluctant to reveal too much. Yet the face belies the pose. It’s an open face, kind and caring, a face obviously familiar with a smile…a smile both given and received. Objectively, of course, we know this face is a product of genetics, nothing more than striated muscle laid across solid bone, shaped in part by lived experience imprinted on the flesh.
But you will forgive us if we choose to see this face as a letter from a good-natured god, signed in full, and delivered to us for our enjoyment.
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