The human body longs for presence. The very structuring and shape of the body makes it a living sanctuary of presence. When a thing is closed, we only encounter its outer shell. The human body can never close off in such a hermetical way. The body is one of the most open and manifest presences in the world. Even from a person who is shy and always withdraws, presence still manages to seep forth. The human body is a language that cannot remain silent. The countenance is an intense and luminous icon of presence. Nowhere else in the world are you encountered and engaged as totally as by a human person. The human face is a miniature village of presence. Every dimension of the face expresses presence: the lines from which it is drawn, the curvature of the mouth, the shape of the face, the dome of the head and especially the eyes. All the aspects of the face combine to bring one individual life to expression. The face is the icon where all the atmosphere, feeling, and thought of an individual life assemble visually.
The days and nights a person has lived seep into presence in the countenance. It is interesting that the Latin root of the word face is “facies,” meaning the shape or form of the head, which is derived from the verb “facere,” which means “to make.” This background confirms the artistic and active force of the face. Neither a surface nor a cover, the face is a doorway to the soul. When you gaze into someone’s face, a pathway opens, resonant with his or her life and memory. You glimpse what life has made or unmade, woven or unravelled in that life. Each face fronts a different world. The philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty said, “My body is the awareness of the gaze of the other.” We are animated through the presence of the other. Every face is a window outwards and inwards on a unique life. Of course, in dance and in theatrical activity, the whole body becomes expressive. Because others can see us, our lives never remain merely ours alone. The openness of the face shows that we participate in the lives of others. Presence to each other is the door to all belonging. And nowhere in the universe is longing so powerfully present as in the human countenance. From here issues all desire for dwelling and community.
The whole structure of the human body anticipates and expects the presence of others. Hands reach out to embrace the world. Human hands are powerful images. Hands painted the roof on the Sistine Chapel and the heavenly women on the wall of Sigeria, wrote the
The instrumentalization of contemporary life pushes us ever further away from Nature. Even farmers do not really get their hands dirty anymore. Years ago, when you looked at a farmer’s hands, they were like miniature lexicons of the landscape. The hands were worn and roughened through contact with soil and stone. Often rib lines of clay insinuated themselves into the lines of the skin. It was a powerful image of living hands reminding us that those hands were originally and would again be clay. People dressed in their Sunday best to go to Mass. Serving Mass, you would see perfectly dressed men come to the altar for Holy Communion. They would stand reverently and offer a pair of withered earthened palms on which the white host would glisten: the bread of life on hands of clay. This is a vignette from a vanishing world. Generally, when we lose individual contact with Nature and with each other, we gradually lose our depth and diversity of presence. The world of function, instrument, and image is a limbo where no presence lives, where no face is identifiable, where everything flattens into the one panel of sameness.
