Yesterday I was under the weather and spent much of the day resting or sleeping. I arose today feeling much better, more here, more awake. This led me to ponder the process of awakening, and the state of being awake.

It is on the playground of the poet, especially the mystic, that this concept has been explored. There is a book I’ve just learned of (oh, the Internet!) that I would be interested in reading: Mystical Delights, which features material from a variety of poets.

I also recently acquired I Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology, featuring the writing of Abraham Joshua Heschel. Here’s what has caught my attention today:

A human being has not only a body but also a face. A face cannot be grafted or interchanged. A face is a message, a face speaks, often unbeknown to the person. Is not the human face a living mixture of mystery and meaning? We are all able to see it, and are all unable to describe it. Is it not a strange marvel that among so many hundreds of millions of faces, no two faces are alike? And that no face remains quite the same for more than one instant? The most exposed part of the body, it is the least describable, a synonym for an incarnation of uniqueness. Can we look at a face as if it were a commonplace?

It is in the face that we witness awakening. The eyes widen, the countenance brightens. We are drawn, I think, to animated faces, to ones that suggest openness and welcome. In this hurly-burly world, I also think we don’t often look at faces, much less see them. Could this be why we often experience alienation, an unwanted sense of anonymity, and why we skim across life’s surface?

Hmmm. Perhaps today I will take time to look, to make the connection. That’s my experiment for the day.