face to face

The human face is the icon of creation.

Each person also has an inner face, which is always sensed but never seen. 

The heart is the inner face of your life. 

The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful. 

It is here that love gathers within you. 

Love is absolutely vital for a human life. 

For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. 

In love, you grow and come home to your self. 

When you learn to love and to let yourself be loved, 

you come home to the hearth of your own spirit. 

A world lies hidden behind each human face. When you look at some faces, you can see the turbulence of the infinite beginning to gather to the surface. Suddenly...their gaze becomes the vehicle of some primal inner presence. The human face carries mystery and is the exposure point of the mystery of the individual life. It is where the private inner world of a person protrudes into the anonymous world. Your face is the icon of your life. In the human face, a life looks out at the world and also looks in on itself. When a persons life has been bleak, much of its negativity can remain unhealed...the bleakness lodges in the face ... instead of being a warm presence, has hardened into a mask. Yet one also encounters the opposite, namely, the beautiful presence of an old face deeply lined ...that has retained a lovely innocence.

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~ John O'Donohue