In Anam Cara John O’Donohue talks about many mysteries. None are so mysterious as human beings. On page 82 he says, “The face is the threshold where a world looks out and a world looks in on itself.” He speaks of the face being the threshold between our inner world – our thoughts and feelings, our personalities, our hopes and fears, our loves and hates, in short, our minds and souls – and the outer world, the world that is not us.
When we meet new people, whether they be family, friends, or strangers, we meet at this threshold. There are those we may know very well indeed, yet there is no one that we know completely. That mystery is always there. No two people think the same thoughts. No two people react the same way. No two people have exactly the same background – even twins are self-contained individual worlds.
Quakers have an expression to “look for that of God in everyone.” I hope to be able to view the people I meet each day not only as human beings created by God, but also as someone containing a whole world behind the threshold of his or her face. It is sure to make life more interesting.
