A Graduation Speech on Human Faces and Relationships

Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

These lines appear near the end of a novel that I recently reread by C.S. Lewis called, Till We Have Faces. It’s a creative retelling of an ancient Greek myth involving Cupid and Psyche. These lines are spoken by Orual, the main protagonist and narrator of the story, shortly after she’s had a mysterious encounter with the gods.  The “they” to which she refers – “why should they hear… how can they meet us…” – are the gods.  If you know this book and you know C.S. Lewis, you know that he’s working on a theological theme with these lines. But in rereading the story recently, I was struck by the significance of the face. Lewis is drawing on the sense that our face is where our true selfhood is expressed and it’s where we see the unique personhood of others.