24th June “It’s only shallow people who do not judge by appearances,” Oscar Wilde; ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’

I’ve discovered the chance to end the whole DC Comic and Marvel franchise. 

In these comic-strip books and films, there is a multiplicity of super-powers on display. Ferrying my daughter to and from work, however, has shown me there need only be one superhero in our lives. In their costume this person’s stare, gesture or word can command armies, cause the intransigent to yield, and vehicles to clear off, this is: High-Viz-Jacket Person. 

At my daughter’s place of work the gate-keeper takes her role very, very seriously. For her, stopping cars appears not to be a job, but a calling. The uniform of this vocation is the high-viz vest from which her power exudes. She scowls, grimaces, and wags her index finger. This harridan of the gates is one of the grumpiest people I have ever encountered. However, after eighteen months, she eventually conceded that I could enter the gates to perform my Uber duties.

Yet, thanks to chemotherapy, that too has all changed. 

After months of only having to apologise for having the temerity to collect my daughter from work, I was once again thrown back into battle with High-Viz-Jacket Person. On seeing me enter she pointed purposefully at the cone between the gate posts. I decided selective blindness was the best approach. High-Viz-Jacket Person was not going to be thwarted from her duty to ‘protect and serve’ by such an infantile ruse. Emboldened by the power of her uniform and office she chased me down. 

I had not had a good day, so my patience was short. The pointing and loud, officious, intonation of, “There’s a cone”, brought the worst out in me. Thankfully the window of the car was still up as I retaliated, exclaiming, “I can see it’s a ..ahem… cone!!!”. Did she hear? I know not, but she seemed more cautious in her approach to the car. Perhaps my anger was High-Viz-Jacket Person’s Kryptonite?

I wound down the window, and, before she could speak, said, “I’ve been collecting my daughter for eighteen months”. She said she did not recognise me, and I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the window, and saw a petri dish specimen from Area 51 in the Nevada Desert looking back at me.

Out of kindness Sarah has assured me that having the physiology of a comic-book alien is not bad. In fact, she goes on, I "have looked far worse". Hmmmm—

The issue for me is more than superficial appearance. It is, rather, the removal of the choice to look like this. Had I opted for the Uncle Fester look, or, as my brother charitably said, the child (Luke) out of the film Grimsby, that would be fine. However, as Jesus said, “you did not choose me, I chose you.” 

There is also, more than pleading for a misplaced sense of autonomy, the acknowledgement that my face and appearance belong to the realm of both freedom and responsibility. I am aware now, more than ever, that despite the impact of malignant biology, our faces are more than flesh: they embody personhood, me and you.  As Roger Scruton argues, “My face is … bound up in the pathos of my condition.”

Last Sunday’s sermon reinforced this, as the focus was a painting by Rembrandt: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee.

Rembrandt spent his life producing endless self-portraits, and in so doing sought to confront the viewer with the need to see him for who he was. This painting depicts all twelve of the apostles as they wrestle with the issue of calming a thunderous storm as they cross the sea in a boat with Christ (Mark 4.35-41). Some react by, hopelessly, trying to tame the boat itself. Some react by pleading. One reacts by praying. But Rembrandt includes a fourteenth figure as well: he paints himself despairing, looking out from the painting, directly at the viewer.

The physicality of the painting, and the face looking out from it, reminds us that this is how we ‘subjectively’ choose to ‘face’ the world. Hence, the face becomes a ‘symbol’ of us. 

Again, the pain of my condition is primarily about the fact that how I face the world, both subjectively (the choice of my appearance), and physically (the impact of chemo), has been decided for me. 

This I have wrestled with as I look into the mirror (something I have done more times in recent weeks than the whole of my teenage years, on the hunt for yet another pimple, put together) and see ET looking back. This is a pain I share with countless others, but, will, perhaps, hopefully in my case, be temporary.

I am thus grateful that my life is set within a narrative of the incarnation; God has a face. Hence, we judge God no longer by Old Testament or mythological standards, but in the face of Jesus Christ. 

Hegel tells us that we move towards concrete knowledge only by a movement outward, to the boundaries of self, even to the point of alienation—(there’s that alien theme again, sorry!). 

Yet here we can transcend the fleshy alien and see truth. 

That would be nice. Me trimming my beard would be nice. Izzy giving my head its grade 5 on the shears would be nice. High-viz vest harridan not policing me would be, very, very, very nice!