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 carvers 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 ...
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