I have somedays felt that faceless is the preferable condition. Lay low.
But I read all of C.S. Lewis’ ‘Til We Have Faces” without figuring out what the title means, or meant. A fantastic story about the struggle to know what the gods want from us. The ancient chthonic dieties didn’t have faces. We moderns are aware that in normal human interactions, the words may carry as little as 7% of the meaning. The rest is conveyed by our tones, expression, even what we wear!
The faceless deities of course were not human. And thus also not from any particular racial group of humans. A faceless stone shaped in the female (round) or male (elongated) version, no wonder people had trouble knowing what these deities wanted from them. All we got was words through multiple layers of priest’s interpretations.
But we have faces, don’t we?
C.S. Lewis wrote this book late in life. He had a Jewish girlfriend, and maybe was softening his ideas that Christianity was the only true way. To me, even his Narnia books imply that.
Is Lewis struggling with the fact that the truest religion can only emerge when humans all see each other the way that the most spiritually enlightened Hindus do.
Which is also what Mother Teresa found to be the most important teaching in Christianity.
Learn to see the Divine in every face you encounter.
Then we will all truly have faces.
