Your Faces in the Hillside

This evening, as I walked my dog along the hillside above my home, it occurred to me that I was on the path you used to ride your horse on as a young man. 


Walking past your old neighbors, who's names I've long forgot, I thought of you astride, as you looked over the valley where you would eventually make your life. I thought of the man you had become that wore so many faces, many that I was lucky enough to see.

The dedicated family man, your most important role. I had watched the care you took over your family and neighbors. The ways you served and were fed there.


The diplomat therapist and analytical thinker, who would calmly navigate couples through the emotional minefield of relationships. You were always reading up on the newest techniques for creating harmony, (but once you opened the book, you would usually end up napping in your chair).


The healer, who’s broad shoulders were often moist at the end of the day, from the endless care you showed the heavyhearted. Few knew that there were many times you went to your knees in prayer in your office, when you felt your client needed help beyond your own ability.


The chuckler who would occasionally choke and cough on your own deep laughter; or clear your throat before you began a thought out loud.


The loyal friend, be it fisherman, or listening ear, you would kindly sit down with those rolled-up sleeves of yours, and be there.


So many others, too many faces to count: The rockstar, guitar man, community theater leading-man, goofball, baseball player, mr. fix-it, the fierce defender.

I would have to say that the thing you were the very best at was navigating your faces, because behind them all, you were always in some internal conversation with yourself. You protected the boundaries of your many faces so intensely; and from my perspective, deep down, you remained a quiet warrior of unspoken battles your whole life.


Climbing the hill this evening with my dog, I could feel the soft beat of my feet in deep contemplation of all your complexity. Somehow, I always knew you as the young man on his horse, on this hillside, over-looking the valley. I saw him in you no matter what face you seemed to captain at any given moment.


When I walked into the church at your funeral and saw this picture of you, I couldn’t help but to say out loud through my smile: 


“There You Are!”


I rejoiced in the face I had known our whole friendship, yet never seen with my eyes. I recognized you immediately, from the light in your smile, when you talked about your music, your Wednesday afternoon fishing, your kids weddings, or simply when you walked toward me to say good morning, arms outstretched; and I would ask you: 


"What's that face for?" with a smile of my own.


I knew this look.  I had seen it so many times.


And tonight, on such a lovely evening, I find it impossible to commemorate the pain of your passing a year ago today. Tonight I choose to commemorate the moment all your faces melt into one. That young, vital man astride his horse overlooking this valley, and the moment of your rebirth into a JOY that surpasses all mortal understanding, just one frail year ago.


In the most meaningful aspect of our friendship, I learned to follow your example of letting people grow beyond the sum total of who they are in any moment.


And now, this evening, in accepting all of who you were, I take even greater appreciation in who you've become as you shed the limitations of this life. I don't hold you in the moment of my prayer for you, crouched outside the room of your passing, I hold you in your best moments. A variety of perspectives, that together resemble more eternally, a glimpse of the reality of you now; as I feel your spirit palpably nudge me off my couch into an unplanned evening walk, along paths you strode yourself.


On my return down the hill, by the time I rounded the corner toward home, the words of the poet David Whyte were rolling across my tongue. 


We shared an appreciation for his work, and this poem always made me think of you; you as the carver, and you as one of the most profound men I will ever know.


In reflecting upon your life, I saw in your faces firsthand a man who was willing to give yourself, over and over again, “to the blows of the Carver’s hand”.




Tonight, I dedicate these words to you, Rex, so beloved, by so many, for so many different reasons:

THE FACES AT BRAGA


In monastery darkness

by the light of one flashlight

the old shrine room waits in silence


While above the door

we see the terrible figure,

fierce eyes demanding, "Will you step through?"


And the old monk leads us,

bent back nudging blackness
prayer beads in the hand that beckons.


We light the butter lamps

and bow, eyes blinking in the

pungent smoke, look up without a word,


see faces in meditation,

a hundred faces carved above,

eye lines wrinkled in the hand held light.


Such love in solid wood!

Taken from the hillsides and carved in silence

they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them.


Engulfed by the past

they have been neglected, but through
smoke and darkness they are like the flowers


we have seen growing

through the dust of eroded slopes,

then slowly opening faces turned toward the mountain.


Carved in devotion
their eyes have softened through age

and their mouths curve through delight of the carver's hand.


If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver's hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.


If only we knew

as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,


we would smile, too
and not need faces immobilized

by fear and the weight of things undone.


When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good.


And as we fight

our eyes are hooded with grief

and our mouths are dry with pain.


If only we could give ourselves

to the blows of the carver's hands,

the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers


feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features

of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.


Our faces would fall away

until we, growing younger toward death

every day, would gather all our flaws in celebration


to merge with them perfectly,
impossibly, wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the carver's hands.

David Whyte, Where Many Rivers Meet
Copyright © 1990 by David Whyte. All Rights Reserved
Many Rivers Press (www.davidwhtye.com)