Being Faced
When last week I saw this marble head, carved in the late second or early third century, the time of Caracalla, in the Archaeological Museum of Nicopolis, I was moved and puzzled. Having admired it, I walked on; but I found myself compelled to return. It was as if the lady was trying to say something to me. I could have sworn I’d seen her that same morning in downtown Preveza coming out of a hairdresser’s, her perm carefully reset. It is extraordinary how a skilled artist can convey personal presence in such a way that it arrests us still after the passage of millennia. Though to have a presence that carries, and so a gift of communion to share, I must first discover and consolidate it. Gregory the Great wrote of St Benedict that he spent a crucial time of his life ‘living alone with himself in God’s sight‘, thus preparing himself for decisive encounters. The order is taller than it may at first seem. A lot of the time, we tend rather to run away from ourselves.
