Blog 1465 – 09.22.2019

That Very Knowing And Recognizable Smile

Someone has said the two most moving and poignant words in the Christian Bible are, “Jesus wept.” But, I believe for all the talk of Mona Lisa’s smile that Jesus must have had a very knowing and recognizable smile. The reason I say that is that he drew people to him, especially children and most people and especially children are repelled by frowns and sad-faced people. As a child, teenager, and young man I heard and thought a lot about what Jesus’ face must have looked like. I saw many, many artists renderings of how they envisioned Jesus’ face before I saw the first one of him smiling. It was a great smile. I bought two copies of the print because I wanted a spare in case something happened to the first one that I framed and hung over my bed in my parents’ house.

Sadly, the picture of Jesus that people see and remember most is a sort of scarecrow version of him strung out and suffering agony on a cross. Of his thirty-three years on earth those were but a few terrible hours of it and not even the end if you believe the rest of the story.

But we will not argue about how that story may or may not have ended. I would rather spend a few moments just thinking about that wonderful smile. We have all seen it and often not when we expected. On a baby’s face while everyone says that little babies are too new to smile. Nonsense, just barely arrived from that other place, they have more to smile about than we do, so often lost in the jungle of time and space. On a new mom’s face who has just endured the most excruciating pain of her life, welcoming her long awaited little one into the world. On a relieved new dad’s face having only just moments ago feared that he might lose both mother and child at now having them both healthy and safe in his arms.

I have seen Jesus’ smile literally everywhere, even in the mirror. There is no place it is not welcome. Sure Jesus wept. We all have, but as the old saying goes, “Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone.” All tears are not bitter tears of loss. Often our eyes leak when our hearts are too full to speak. Some smiles too are fearful smiles when we are so scared that we do not know what else to do.

Silly men, and I know for I too have played that part often, trying to hide my emotions lest someone realize that I have a very tender heart. None of us enjoys being make fun of or being taken unfair advantage of because of our tenderness. Another’s smiling face can melt through the armor to the inner amore showing us what we are really here for. And that is not just to get rich, build monuments to ours or to anyone else’s ego, or even to win, win, win, till we get tired of winning, but to smile a while, to love and be loved.

In 1948, two years before I began this adventure in space and time, Nat King Cole, famous jazz and pop singer recorded his first solo hit, Nature Boy. It could be a song about Jesus’ smile and that of each and everyone of us who learn what we came here knowing but sometimes get so caught up in the illusion that we forget – the last wonderful line of the song repeated. Read it and smile or google it for yourself and hear Nat sing it again, and then smile. It has always been an impossible secret to keep how tender and big-hearted that you truly are.

Nature Boy

There was a boy

A very strange enchanted boy

They say he wandered very far

Very far, over land and sea

A little shy and sad of eye

But very wise was he

And then one day, a magic day

He passed my way, and while we spoke

Of many things, fools and kings

This he said to me

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn

Is just to love and be loved in return”

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn

Is just to love and be loved in return”

Written by: Eden Ahbez

Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc., Songtrust Ave

Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind

Your loving and smiling friend,

And fellow traveler,

David White