Faces of God

When I was thirteen, I walked slowly up to the priest giving out Communion.  Decked out in a green robe with a white stripe down the front, he held a gold chalice in one hand, his other hand resting on the cup’s lip, holding a white wafer between his thumb and index finger.  He looked up into my face, opened his eyes wide, and formed an “O” with his lips. Staring deeply into my eyes—I remember his eyes were brown—he exclaimed, “The face of God.”

I have always wondered what he meant.  Did he think that green eyes were particularly pretty? Did he see God in my eyes where he looked so deeply?  Did he think that I had some higher power present in my face, a power that he recognized out of his own wisdom?  Did he see my soul? 

All that I know is that I have always carried on a conversation with my soul. 

As part of my relationship with myself, I have thought deeply about my relationships with other human beings.  This is why I always have wondered about the issue of racism.  When I was little, my parents acted like racists.  They learned these hateful attitudes from their narrow-minded parents and relatives who lived in Northern states surrounded by the descendants of Europeans—Swedes, Polish, German, and Irish.  When you live in such a closed community, it is easy to label people who don’t look like you as “the others.”

My soul told me that these “others” that my relatives insulted were like me.  They had feelings, hearts, and souls like me.  Yet, as I grew older, I learned about the great chasm that divided Whites and Blacks.  So much distrust.  So much lack of understanding.  So much violence.  So little peace on either side. 

So I read about the history of the people of whom I was once taught to distrust.  As I read and learned about the untold history of the African American, I watched my parents change their attitude as well.   

After retiring from the Air Force, my father went back to school to earn a degree as a building contractor.  His biggest job as a contractor was to build See’s Candy Stores in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii.  He had to manage all the contractors who came to work on the remodeling and building of the stores.  Some of them were Black. 

I remember one night when he came over to my house for dinner after he had worked all day in a nearby store.  We sat on the patio.  The sun had set into night, and the porchlight lit up his big face like a full moon.  “Two of my electricians are Black,” he exclaimed.  “What good workers they are.  Not only that.  They are friendly and can joke around just like the other guys.” 

He was fifty years old, and I realized that it had taken him more than half his lifetime to learn how to trust people who were different from him on the outside.  I was amazed, but I also hoped that it wouldn’t take me that long to learn my own lessons. 

By the time my mother was 76 and my father had died, a Black family had moved in next door to the home where my parents had lived while raising their large family.  Now, my mother lived all alone.  When her Black neighbors went on vacation, they asked her to take in their mail.  She agreed.  She also found out that the father was a professional painter, so when she needed some painting done, she asked him to do the job. 

Pretty soon, their little girl came over in the afternoons to visit her “grandma” next door.  She drew pictures for her.  My mother bought the little girl little trinkets from the Dollar Store.  When I spoke with Mom on the phone, she described her visits with Lily and mused about the next trinket she would buy for her.  I felt jealous.  She wasn’t Lily’s real grandmother.  Mom belonged to us.

Finally, after a few years, my jealousy waned as I watched my mother turn her love toward more and more people, never judging them, and loving them for what they brought into her life. She did not only belong to me, but she belonged to everyone that she chose to love.

When my mother turned eighty-six, she couldn’t pass her driver’s test.  She sold her car and asked a fellow church-goer to drive her to church on Sundays.  By the time she turned eighty-nine, her eye-sight was so bad that if she dropped a bottle of pills on the floor, she couldn’t see well enough to pick them up and put them in the correct bottle again.  So we moved my mother into an assisted-living home.  She gave her most precious piece of furniture—a mahogany marble topped washstand that she had purchased in England—to the Black family next door.  “My friend Vivian,” she said, “has always loved that table.”

I never witnessed my father’s interactions with his Black contractors, and I never heard him talk about his experiences with my mother.  I rarely was around when my mother interacted with her Black neighbors, but, over the phone mostly, I listened to her transformation from a racist to someone who embraced her African American neighbors as special friends and trusted people. 

Both of my parents learned that African Americans were not the “other” people they couldn’t trust.  My parents became walking miracles.  Their attitudes underwent a revolutionary change—they learned to see African Americans as men, women, and children with souls—with the faces of God.