This was created over a few months of learning about facial features, drawing and painting them together. Finally we put it all together and then made the sound track with the help of Ferenkeh Tarawally who has been visiting from from Sierra Leonne. He gave me a few Djimbe lessons while he was with us. The text was adapted from a piece written by David Chronic on working with children with varying degrees of attachment disorder.
(text read in animation)
The Face
baby puts everything in her mouth
ingesting her external environment
making it a part of herself.
a drawn face is moved
up and down in front of her
she smiles back.
the Face is the primal prototype
of religious experience
at around six months
the child becomes aware
that the face is not
constantly present.
the Face in whose Presence
each person was created
is that which constantly seeks us (Luke 19:10).
In His incarnation,
the Son has shown us
the Face of God.
"And all of us with unveiled faces,
seeing the glory of the Lord
as though reflected in a mirror,
are being transformed into the same image
from one degree of glory
to another; For it is God who said,
‘Let light shine out of darkness,’
who has shone in our hearts
to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Christ.(2 Corinthians 3:17-18)
the Face that finds us and liberates us
will never leave or abandon us (Hebrews 13:5).
We no longer find identity
in opposition to others,
now identity is in relationship to the Son,
By responding, the Triune God becomes our primary attachment.
constant loneliness is dissolved in His Face
to whom we belong and correspond. (pause)
As community we come together as a sign
that our cosmic loneliness has found the constant presence of the Face.
As community, we invite people into the Spirit of God
to hear the affirmation of the Father,
and we together incarnate a “face” of consistency,
fidelity, love, and limits, finding together the Face of God.
