Gazing at Others

Dear Friends,  

Today’s blog is something of a ramble...It’s about an action we perform which often goes nameless and has hidden implications for others. I’m talking about “gazing at others.” To gaze at someone is to look steadily, intently and earnestly at someone, something. It is to look with eagerness and curiosity (New Webster’s Dictionary). 

Whose gaze matters to us? Whose gaze do we emulate as we look upon others? Whose gaze do we feel upon us? What is in our hearts and minds as we gaze at others? Or maybe we are like Dives, in the Gospel, who does not even see Lazarus at his doorstep, much less gaze on him. 

Ibrah X Kendi, the author who recently won the National Book Award, asks us to look at the “white gaze,” a phrase he took from Toni Morrison who says it is as if “our lives have no meaning, no depth without the white gaze.” Kendi goes on to enlarge that phrase “white gaze.” “When internalized by Black people, the white gaze functions as a pair of glasses binding our eyes and thereby our very being...The white gaze positions white people as the perpetual main character of Black life and thought.”  

There is the white gaze, the male gaze that pins a woman as being in a particular place, the gaze of the monied 1% whose demands accept no counterproposal, the gaze of arrogance or self-centeredness. 

In Mark 10.17-22, a wealthy young man ran up and knelt before Jesus and asked him, “Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” You can read the ensuing conversation for yourself, but pause at verse 21. “Jesus gazed upon him with love.” The young man went away, but the loving gaze of Jesus followed him, it did not abandon him. 

With everything we ask as we approach Jesus, He gazes on us with love. If we bring nothing, He nonetheless gazes on us with love. Each of us is the rich young man. 

In our day, do we focus our gaze on anyone long enough to know them and love them as they are? God gives us the call to do so in Psalm 11.4, “God’s eye gazes watchfully.” And then there is the example of Stephen, dying from being stoned in Acts 7, “But he, filled with the Holy Spirit, gazed intently to heaven.” Stephen, in the midst of his worst trial, gazed up to where he could find God and he was not disappointed...Stephen had the courage to die faithful because he saw the gaze of God upon him. 

In these early summer days, here are some questions to consider while sitting outdoors or walking on city streets: 

    Does my gaze maximize or minimize the worth of the person(s) upon whom I gaze?  

    Do I even see the stranger in the store, in the library, in the church, much less gaze upon him/her?  

    Is the gaze I rest upon others limited by my classist, sexist, racist biases?   

    Upon whom, like Jesus, do I gaze with love? 

~Sister Joan Sobala