It's all in the eyes. My eyes, and those gazing down from the image of Christ painted here, on this ceiling, nearly a millennium ago. No, that's not quite right. It's really what's happening between our eyes, and beyond.
Imagine a crypt beneath a cathedral, a space first created in 1053. Not a dusty, dreary sort of place that houses bones and wreckage, but a magnificently vaulted space gleaming in white limestone. The floor has two fall-lines but the ceiling is flat, providing a geometrically perfect foundation for the great spaces above. This crypt is of light, its spaces serene. It is a place for reflection and contemplation. There, in the apse, above the altar, is Christ.
Now mind you, I'm not Christian by birth or practice. Inevitably, as a child of the West, I did learn the basic iconography and teachings. So, of course, I recognized this particular image as Christ. And, yes, I know that his gaze is said to encompass the suffering of the world. I knew that others believe this is so, but didn't see how, until I met his eyes -- those great brown-black orbs above me.
In that moment, it seemed to me that His gaze transcends time and the long-dead artist's reach encompasses the present. He is immortal, eternal. Never-ending, divine for so long as living beings recognize the expression in those eyes. Holding a book in his lap whose covers depict the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, this Christ holds us all against his bosom. He stares, forever outward and within; and then he transforms.
One minute, he is the living Christ. The next, those compassionate orbs convey knowledge of death and the hereafter, peering through a face suddenly gone gaunt. White skin shimmers into bone-dry skull. It's a trick of perspective, and color, this teaching on life and impermanence. It's a trick of the mind, to see life become death and then return, alive.
I saw that outer shift, with my eyes glued to His. Then, through his eyes, came the blessing. I saw the inner movement as I gained a glimpse of the teachings. Whatever lives today, will pass. Whatever passes, will return. Changed and unchanged, across the ages and beyond all time -- in the light of those great eyes.
Those eyes are prisms that transform and through which all can be seen. From the depths of a crypt, bright white in windowless space, we too can look outward and within. Our eyes can see, if we but look. His eyes show us how.
He is also the One with eyes like blazing fire.
He is the Alpha and the Omega.
He is Jesus. He is the Lord.