The look of a white man sizing up a Black man. The gaze of a tall person looking down at a dwarf, an adult at a child, a child at an adult. The father's look at his son, the son's at his father. The supervisor's glance at an employee, the worker's at the boss.
The young person's look at the old, the old person's at the young. A man's gaze at a woman, and hers at him.
What do all these looks carry with them?
Can they reflect God's own gaze—seeing His own face in the other?
The one who is erased
Veronica and Umberto have three children, one profoundly handicapped. All of them attend a family gathering: cousins near and far fill the room. Their grandmother makes a point of politely introducing Veronica, her daughter-in-law, to those she hasn't met. She says, "This is Veronica, who has two lovely children." Veronica corrects her sharply: "No. I have three children. One of them is severely handicapped." The child had been unconsciously erased from his grandmother's memory. Veronica leaves immediately for home. Her mother-in-law doesn't know how to repair the damage. It will take months to close this wound.
by J.F.
What would you have done?
Bernardo is four years old. He is blind and intellectually disabled. His behavior is strange: repetitive gestures, sudden outbursts. His mother tries to give him the life of other children. Wednesday afternoons, she takes the bus with him and Stefania, his older sister of seven, to go to the public gardens. On the bus, a woman stares at Bernardo intently, then with disapproval. His mother endures in silence. But Stefania cannot hold back. She insults the woman brutally, telling her to stop looking at her little brother that way. Other passengers make their feelings known. His mother hurries off the bus with the children at the next stop. Should she have scolded young Stefania publicly?
by J.F.
Dark, sad, cold looks . . .
Even after studying in Paris for four years, there is one thing I cannot get used to: the dark, sad, cold, worried, indifferent looks of people I encounter in the metro.
Yet last year I understood that it takes so little to change someone's expression.
In September, I was returning to Paris, full of joy from a pilgrimage to Rome. The graces of the Holy Year had filled me with enthusiasm, and I wanted to live out the words of the last hymn sung at Saint John Lateran: "Go and carry the good news to the world and be my witnesses over all the earth." I think this light must have shone around me, because very soon I noticed that people's looks began to brighten, their faces relaxed, sometimes lighting up with a smile. To communicate the joy and trust I carried in my heart—despite the worries, the fatigue, the frustration of every day—I had no other recipe but to sing quietly to myself a hymn of praise or a prayer for grace.
It takes so little to change someone's expression. I can point to one specific instance where I measured the weight of a glance. For more than two years, every Sunday evening, returning to the city, I encounter the same person at the metro station. She is a young woman who limps noticeably because one leg is shorter than the other.
Before the pilgrimage, I carefully avoided looking at her, fearing she would take my understanding gaze for pity or curiosity. So I fixed my eyes on my shoes. She, keeping close to the wall, sat down quickly, pretending to read a book. When the metro arrived, we boarded, continuing this little scene.
Coming back from Rome, I dared to look her in the face for the first time.
I hoped she would read in my eyes what all the others seemed to find there. That evening she did not open her book. Since then, she reaches the platform, and when our eyes meet, we smile at each other. Simply.
by Anne-France M.
First smile
Sofia is a six-year-old girl with Down syndrome. She has received little love. Her parents could not bear the shock of her birth. After divorcing, they abandoned her in a specialized institution. Fortunately, an uncle and aunt agreed to take her out and bring her with them for a few weeks during vacation, so she could feel for a time the warmth of family life.
It was there, just a few days ago, that some friends encountered her. She was playing in the courtyard in front of the house. They smiled at her when they arrived; and as long as they were in that house, she did not stop coming to see them, bringing them a toy, a flower—in short, asking for another smile.
Since the guests were surprised by her friendliness, the aunt answered them: "It is strange. Usually she is not like this. She rarely approaches people she doesn't know. On the contrary, she is shy, but I think your smile when you arrived was enough to make her this way!"
by P. and S.
They know right away if we love them
The first time we took him out of the institution with adoption in view, Emanuele barely spoke.
At six years old, his vocabulary was limited to a few imitative sounds. To communicate, he could only use his gaze.
He would fix his big eyes in ours with a request, a deep search for affection: "Do you really want to care about me? Do you really love me?" The moment he sensed a yes in the answer, he would burst into laughter and rush toward us for kisses and hugs! A few days later, I was shopping with him in the town near our home when I ran into two old friends, one after the other, who did not yet know about our plan to adopt Emanuele. The first one immediately bent down to him and answered that eternal request for affection: more laughter and kisses. I left my friend, happy to have found her fully in favor of our plan. Emanuele was happy too, to have encountered an adult who paid attention to him and cared for him.
"Do you really want to care about me? Do you really love me?"
Two minutes later, I bumped into the other friend. She merely looked Emanuele up and down, then turned to me asking: "Where on earth did you find that thing?"
Perhaps realizing what she had said, she bent down to Emanuele. But it was too late.
Emanuele shut down like an oyster: pressed against me, he turned his face away from the person in whose gaze he could not find love. How many times we have encountered this mystery of the gaze. Handicapped children, even those so poor in other ways, know immediately if we love them. From the first moment we should know how to tell them: "Yes, I love you. I love you, you whom God loves even more."
Then they hesitate . . .
Joelle often makes the trip from home to the center. Her mother accompanies her by train. She is very calm, and you can read on her face that she has Down syndrome. The other day, all the passengers abandoned the compartment one by one, some more casually, some more awkwardly. At the next station two young people appear: seeing Joelle, they step back, hesitate. Then they decide to enter. They sit down. They smile at Joelle, and she smiles back. They do not know they have saved Joelle's mother a sleepless night of tears.
by J.F.
The weight of looks
She is beautiful, smiling, full of energy, but she is a dwarf. An inner light illuminates her face. She is among those messengers whose lips have been touched by the coal of Isaiah, who long ago said:
"Here I am, Lord; send me where you will." But the people who receive her message must first accept it through this disfigured body. She knows this. She measures those moments of hesitation in endless seconds. "I wait," she says, "to be accepted. Only after that do I dare to be myself." And in that "after" lies the terrible weight of looks.
This weapon we carry
I spend every day in the hospital: here I have often witnessed the effects a single glance can have, especially on people who are particularly wounded, like the sick.
I have seen people sink into deep depression because they read some glance—especially from someone in a white coat—as an inexorable verdict, spoken without intention. In an instant, feelings are communicated, then magnified by someone in a state of insecurity and fear. Realizing this uncontrollable means of communication, I have experienced many times what it means "not to know where to look," to fear this dangerous weapon we carry with us. It took being sick myself to understand much: sometimes I believed I was dying because of someone's overly grave gaze; other times I thought I would die from lack of care, from someone else's gaze that was too superficial and indifferent. Rarely did I feel understood: others saw in me the disease, the sick organ, and I found myself suddenly transformed into a collection of anatomical parts. And I felt I was a "person"!
The gaze often has this damned power to select, from all the things that make up a person, one single thing—sacrificing the "whole" for the "part." This fragmentation cracks further the already fragile mood of the sick, of those who feel different.
What the gaze first perceives are indeed "differences." From outside it settles carelessly on those aspects that distinguish me from you, underlines your diversity, and thus becomes a gaze that categorizes, that separates: I am healthy, my gaze probes your illness; I am cheerful, my gaze fixes on your sadness; it keeps its distance. The effects a gaze can have, especially on wounded people. . .
It is the same toward those who bear on themselves visible signs of wounds to their mind or body, like some of my friends or people you meet on the street. A thousand difficulties in moving beyond the differences, in not stopping there! And at best the gaze is awkward and embarrassed.
Small steps forward on this path have been taught to me by my friends who are labeled "different" by us. I have come to know the abundance of their gifts; they have shown me that there are not only "differences" in them. You must be attentive, gentle, and you discover much more—perhaps differences that this time put us at a loss in comparison: it happened that their gaze drew out my poor "differences," my fears and my lies. All drawn out by Carla's gaze that says to me: "You are not happy!" or by Elena's eyes that seem to tell me: "You don't understand me!" They have taught me that there is a gaze "from within," one that does not keep its distance, does not separate, does not divide me from you. A gaze that instead builds a bridge, true communication between me and you, beyond "differences."
So every morning in the hospital, during the "official" visit: I do not yet have the right to speak and the patients know it, but all the same, while they listen to the official speeches—those that often fragment them into so many organs and reduce them to their illness—they look at me and I know that in silence I can loosen unnecessary tensions, I can add a bit of trust, I can clear up misunderstandings, I can say: "I know that beyond your illness there is all your mystery."
by Anna Cece
Experiences drawn from Ombres et Lumière, no. 96