Saving Face & a Slammin' Cover Reveal
In the other’s face we find our own.
“Till that word can be dug out of us, why should [God] hear the babble that we think we mean? How can [God] meet us face to face till we have faces?” —C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
This line from Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces impacted me more than I knew it when I read it in my early 20’s.
What is it about the face? What do we mean when we talk about God’s face? Or our own? Why can it be so difficult to look someone in the eye? Especially a suffering someone? To hold that gaze? What is revealed? How do we find Christ in the faces of others? How do we find our own faces?
(The making of Saving Face photography from Wayne Brezinka’s webpage)
What if the crises in the church today are not because we don’t have the right doctrine, but because we have lost our imagination and wonder? What if we have lost sight of the ultimate blessing to have God’s face shine upon us? What if we are spending all our time hustling a curated face of what we think we are supposed to be and never developing a real face? Never digging the truth out of ourselves about who we are – and missing the presence of Christ with his people.
We all long for faces that fit. For faces worth saving. And we need one another’s faces to call out our own. Looking into others’ faces reveals a greater mystery. Saving Face is a reflection on the divine face and the meaning we get from the faces of others as we are trying to find our own. Our personhood will be consummated as we together make it to that day before the face of God.
(The making of Saving Face photography from Wayne Brezinka’s webpage)
I can’t tell you how excited I am to be releasing this book into the world on April 8th! I feel like this is the writing I’ve been wanting to do all along. This is the contemplating deep inside that I was trying to work out and wonder over all these years as I tried to figure out spiritual formation as a young adult and tripped over how hard it was for a woman to have space and companionship for that in the church. I spent so much time on the babble that I thought I meant trying to get to my own face and God’s. In this book, I get a little more Aimee in the raw. And I am inviting you into a combination of storied memory, creative writing, Scripture meditations, and journaling on the divine face, and the meaning we get from the faces of others, as we are trying to find our own. I’m excited to share it with my Substack readers first, as I’ve been more Aimee in the raw here, and so enriched through what my readers have shared in reciprocation.
(The making of Saving Face photography from Wayne Brezikina’s webpage)
I just finished the final stage of edits on the page proofs, and it is starting to get real. I wanted to introduce the book to you today, in all it’s cover design reveal glory. That’s a story of its own! Zondervan and I worked with artist Wayne Brezinka who created this amazing cover design which is part sculpture and part mixed media, including a multiple of cut-and-pasted printed paper, cloth, rope and collage on 20 x 16 inch wood panel. How cool is that?! You have to go to his website and check out his other three-dimensional art, including Tracy Chapman (which is in the Grammy Museum in Mississippi), Mr. Rogers (in the Children’s Museum in Pittsburg), and Flannery O’Connor! I enjoyed the whole process of working with Wayne; he really engaged with what the book is about and captured the mystery and mood that I wanted for the cover. It’s absolutely beautiful, isn’t it? So if you are unsure of whether my writing will captivate you, pre-order Saving Face for the cover design alone! Just think about how cool you will look on the park bench, at the waiting room in the doctor’s office, on the plane, or in the work break room reading this book!
(The making of Saving Face photography from Wayne Brezinka’s webpage)
I’ll be sharing more from and about the book as we get closer to the release date, but I do hope you are already getting excited with me and that we can all just take a minute to celebrate this wonderful cover design, and how the pages inside will help us dig out the truth from ourselves and one another.
We don’t think we can look too closely at our secrets. And we certainly cannot speak them. But they keep us stuck. Jesus is hanging out in our secrets, waiting for us. Getting to them is as simple as paying attention to those nagging thoughts and sensations that we try to distract ourselves from and to consider what it is we really want.
This is the secret that God is teaching us—what it is to be human.
—Saving Face
I would love it if you shared this post to get the word out!
“How many loved your moments of glad grace or loved your beauty with love false or true? But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you and loved the sorrows of your changing face.”
When I first found and wrote this bit of poetry from W.B. Yeats on the back of an old and favorite photo of my wife and me that I’d kept in my Bible for years after we’d wed and then gave it to my bride as a peace offering after some long-forgotten argument that we’d had, I thought that I was the man who is speaking to his beloved in that poem.
In the years since, considering all my failures to love her like this, to really love her in this way that she deserves, I now know that the man speaking this love to her must be Jesus.
“What if the crises in the church today are not because we don’t have the right doctrine, but because we have lost our imagination and wonder? What if we have lost sight of the ultimate blessing to have God’s face shine upon us?”
In Revelation 2:2-5 Jesus tells the church in Ephesus that He applauds their adherence to doctrine and their fight against evil but they have lost their first love and without that they are incomplete. They have become so legalistic that they no longer love Him or each other as they once did. Their time is not spent in awe of Him or caring for each other or their community. If they do not repent and return to what they first were they will loose their lampstand- their light- Jesus’s light. God’s face will not shine upon them.
Yes- we have lost our light, our wonder, our sight and many “churches” have lost their lampstands they just don’t realize it yet. But they will. Ephesus did not survive, their port is gone, they are just a pile of ruins in the Province of Izmir. Smyrna survived and is now known as Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey. Smyrna persevered, saved face, held on to their wonder and kept their lampstand.
I like that you said “in other’s face we find our own”. It is like listening with our eyes.