The gesture is a simple one: a boy and a girl accidentally "catch" each other looking from opposite sides of a classroom. There is a bashful aversion of glances, but an invisible string now draws their gazes back upward. Something has been created in their midst, and life has sprung forth in the void.
In the simple meeting of gazes lies the mystery of Creation, simpler, perhaps, than we ever supposed. All the Created world is collaborative: "Let us make man in our image," our God says, and later we learn that, without Jesus, "nothing was made that has been made." And even as we are daily created anew, this is not absent of other people, but rather by the influence and well-mulled-over contributions of the people who occupy our surroundings.
Creation, too, is an issue of its creator: a representational, visceral, through-the-looking-glass interpretation of the designer, which bears, in some way his actual essence. Consider, for example, the architects of dreams in the movie Inception. By that which we create, we are, in some ways, made plain to those who see it, for seeing is a means of participating. When we truly, mutually see each other, we implicitly participate. Offshoots as we are of the Creator, there is a deep human longing to re-engage each other. Humanity has a need to be exposed, to be seen in its formlessness and void, with the Spirit of the Lord hovering over the waters. For that which we truly see we become complicit in, and the words of Psalm 38 become precious, overturning the soul: "All my longings lie open before You, Lord."
What intimacy there is in a husband and wife gazing into each other's faces. What intensity there is when even enemies collide and two unrelenting gazes lock. The expanse drawn out between two pairs of eyes is the world's most fertile ground. Every distraction and blight falls helplessly away. You cannot share a gaze where there is shame. You cannot share a gaze where there is indifference. Neither party can remain withdrawn; no context of time can be applied but the absolutely immediate present. There is a distillation of human purpose in the act of looking upon each other: we were meant to live life face-to-face.
We are a society of shoegazers. Much of the stuff of our daily lives could be carried out and accomplished without ever engaging another person, and true friendship has become a labor and a chore rather than the organic outflow of our nearness and our common need. We need so little, and what deficit remains we fill with counterfeits: the insular clutter of our iPods, our Netflix queues, and the faceless and disembodied chattering of social networks. No wonder that we are driven toward superficial and performative notions of love, success, and companionship. We make ourselves scarce and our failures invisible. We fear exposure because we are all imposters, violently overselling our few and feeble merits for fear that we will be discovered to be of as little value as we each secretly believe.
How unlike the life of faith.
In Christ we are the body: cells reproducing and dying, ever-attentive to the needs of this flesh, bearing in our souls the precious words of life: that ribosomal impartation of God that "shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper the thing whereunto I sent it." Here we have a responsibility to each other.
Incredible.
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