“If you change the way you look at things, 
the things you look at change.”

Good Morning and Happy Monday,

Today's reflection is long, Folks. But I believe it's worth making time to read it. 

I was only about eight years old when I first saw the image above. I can still remember my grandmother ushering our whole family into her little kitchen after a routine Sunday dinner.

Standing in front of the pantry, she explained that she had taped a newspaper clipping onto the inside of the pantry door and she told the story behind it. It represented a miracle and the miraculous nature of life. 

But mainly, she wanted us to look at the image. "What do you see?" she asked. At first, everyone was quiet, which was unusual in our boisterous family.

"I see it!" someone said. Then another. And another. The meaningless blobs changed, or so it seemed. 

I was slow to see it. For me and a few others, my grandmother traced her finger around the shapes in a certain way, guiding us to see it differently that we had been. 

It was only after we shifted our gaze that the image became a face. A face we knew. Not from actually seeing the man, nor from a photo taken 2000 years ago, but from the way he is often depicted in paintings and statues. 

The shift, the ah-ha of recognition, felt like a miracle to me.   

I didn't realize it then, but I now see how that was my first clear, strong lesson about how we look at things. 

From that first joy of finding what had been hidden and connecting it to the sacred, The Face has become a touchstone for me, reminding me to always be willing to see things differently, and to trust that there is something beyond what appears on the surface, in situations and in people. 

I also connect The Face with Mother Teresa’s response when she was asked how she could work with the diseased and the dying, the poorest of the poor, and the outcasts in the streets of Calcutta. 
 

“I see every one of them as Jesus in disguise,” she said. 
 

We too, can shift whenever we first feel disgust or fear or pity or any non-accepting feeling toward a fellow human being. 

We too can seek, each in our own way, to see Jesus in Disguise, or a Spark of the Divine, or a Holy Presence, or the Preciousness of Life, or the Essence of Love. 

Just as hope doesn’t leave us, even though we sometimes leave it, Something Sacred is always present, despite surface appearances.  
 

Here is a version of that image I saw long ago. Do you see The Face? 

With much love,
Charlene

PS - I'd love to hear your thoughts and feelings!

THE FIFTH GIFT IS HOPE.
Through each passage and season
may you trust the goodness of life.  
- from The Twelve Gifts of Birth