I Duck Out Of Every One

You do a step. You have done it for years and it is very good.

Somebody lifts a phone, and there is a half second before anybody has settled, and you move. Sideways, to the edge, or you turn to say something to whoever is nearest, or you crouch to sort out one of the children who does not need sorting out.

By the time it goes off you are out of it, and you are out of it so smoothly that nobody in your family has ever remarked on it.

I am not going to talk about how you look.

Not once in this article. There is no paragraph coming where I tell you what you actually look like, or that you are too hard on yourself, or that the people who love you see something different from what you see.

All of that may be true and it is not mine to say, and more to the point it has never worked on anybody. Somebody says a kind thing about your face and you file it as kindness rather than as evidence, and the next time a phone comes up you do the step anyway.

So the appearance conversation is closed. I am not having it.

What I want to do instead is change what the photograph is for.

Because at the moment there is one purpose in your head, and it is: this will be an image of me that I will have to look at. That is what a camera is, in your experience. A device that produces something for you to be assessed by, mostly by yourself, later, alone.

And with that purpose, ducking is completely rational. Of course you avoid it. You are avoiding a small unpleasant future event and you are avoiding it competently.

I want to show you that the photograph is not for that at all.

We all with open face

There is a verse in Corinthians about a mirror, and what it says we are looking at is the point.

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:18, King James Version)

Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord.

A glass is a mirror. So there is a mirror in this verse, and the extraordinary thing is what is in it.

Not you. The glory of the Lord.

We are used to one thing happening in front of a mirror, and it is inspection. You look, you assess, you find the thing you always find, and you move on slightly worse than you arrived. That is the entire transaction and most of us do it several times a day.

This verse describes a mirror where the looking is aimed outward, at Him, and where the effect of the looking is that the person doing it is changed.

And then: with open face.

The phrase is set against Moses putting a veil over his face. Open face means unveiled, uncovered, not hidden.

Now, that verse is about the freedom of standing before God without a covering, and I am not going to pretend it was written about a camera. But the shape of it is worth having in your hands today, because your instinct in front of a lens is the veil. Step out. Turn away. Do not be the one uncovered.

And what the verse says about being uncovered before God is that it is safe there, and that it is where the changing happens.

You are not being assessed by God when you are unveiled. Nobody in this verse is being marked.

The looking that changes anybody is aimed outward and not at your own face, and being uncovered has never once been the same as being assessed. 2 Corinthians 3:18 puts the glory of the Lord in the glass rather than the self, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody stepping sideways out of a frame.

What the picture is actually for

Here is the practical half, and it is a change of owner.

That photograph is not for you.

You have been treating it as a picture of you, produced for your inspection. It is not. It is a record of a moment, and its real owner is whoever looks at it in thirty years, and what they will want from it is not what you want from it now.

Think about a photograph of your own mother or your grandmother that you love.

Consider what you actually look at in it. You look at her face, and you look at whether she seemed happy, and you look at the room behind her and what was on the table and what she was wearing because it is so exactly her. You are looking for her.

You have never once assessed her in that picture. It has never crossed your mind to think about her weight, or her hair, or whether that was a good year for her. And if somebody suggested you should be evaluating her, you would find it grotesque.

That is what your daughter will do with today's photograph.

She will look for you. And what she will get, if the step continues, is a set of photographs of her childhood with her mother edited out of them, and she will notice, and she will not understand it as modesty.

So the picture is not an image for you to face. It is an object you are leaving for somebody, and its usefulness to them has nothing whatsoever to do with how you feel about your face.

That is why I am not going to argue with you about your appearance. It is not the disagreement. The disagreement is about who the photograph belongs to.

That photograph belongs to whoever looks at it in thirty years, and how you feel about your face has never once been what it exists for. The written word puts the glory rather than the self in the mirror, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody who has never once assessed her own grandmother.

Be in one, and do not look

So here is the assignment, and both halves are required.

Be in one photograph today and do not look at it afterward.

The first half is the step. When somebody lifts a phone today, do not move. Stay exactly where you are. Do not turn to say something, do not crouch, do not go and check on anybody.

Just stand still and let it happen. It takes about a second and a half.

And the second half is the one that makes it survivable.

Do not look at it.

Not afterwards, not that evening, not when you are going through the phone the next day. If it comes up on a screen, put the phone down or scroll past. If somebody shows you, glance at the room rather than at yourself.

Here is why that matters more than the first half.

Every previous time you have been in a picture, you looked, and the looking is what taught you that pictures are dangerous. You were caught by an image you had not prepared for, and you felt what you feel, and the next phone that came up got the step.

So the not looking is not avoidance. It is refusing to give the assessment its usual opportunity. The photograph gets to exist and go into the record, and you never enter the transaction it used to be for.

And you may find that after a few weeks you can look at it. Or you may not, and that is completely fine. Nothing in this assignment requires you ever to look at a picture of yourself with pleasure. The picture only has to exist.

One second and a half. And then leave it alone.

You are able to let it exist without entering the transaction, and the picture has never once needed your approval to be worth keeping. 2 Corinthians 3:18 turns the mirror outward entirely, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody standing still while a phone goes off.