Your glorious eyes

Attachment means attunement. Attunement means pleasure and interest, joy and attentiveness. Attunement requires the face to face communion, the mutual gaze transaction. So if I want to attach and connect with You, I have to enter into a mutual gaze transaction, that is, I have to see Your face or at least experience what Your face would look like if You were here. I would have to imagine. Taking what I know about You and what You are like, I have to construct a face that would be consistent with that verbal portrait You have painted in the Bible.

So, are You interested in me? Are You attentive to me? Are You enjoying me? Do You take pleasure in me? Are You smiling? Are You happy? Am I important enough to You for You to desire to be with me? What is the look on Your face now?.....

I am reminded of a verse early in Isaiah:

Isaiah 3:8 “For Jerusalem has stumbled,

and Judah has fallen,

because their speech and their deeds are against the LORD,

defying his glorious presence.”

1. Presence = eye = “The eye is used to express knowledge, character, attitude, inclination, opinion, passion, and response. The eye is a good barometer of the inner thoughts of man. Of all the physical organs of the body, the eye was considered one of the more important. Anthropomorphically eyes are attributed to God. His eyes are in every place, observing the good and evil (Proverbs 15:3). They focus throughout the whole earth to defend the righteous (2 Chronicles 16:9). Man can find favor in the eyes of the Lord (Genesis 6:8). When God directs his eyes to man, he sustains and delivers him (Ps 33:18; 34:15). The eyes are a mirror of man’s inner being.” (from Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament) So does that mean that Your eyes are a mirror of Your inner being?
2. Glorious = The basic meaning is “to be heavy, weighty,” a meaning which is only rarely used literally. From this figurative usage it is an easy step to the concept of a “weighty” person in society, someone who is honorable, impressive, worthy of respect. So he is not only to be honored because of his position as sovereign head of the universe, but because of his surpassing character in all realms. Over against the transience of human and earthly glory stands the unchanging beauty of the manifest God and the word takes on its most unusual and distinctive meaning. Its force is so compelling that it remolds the meaning. These manifestations are directly related to God’s self-disclosure’ and his intent to dwell among men. God wishes to dwell with men, to have his reality and his splendor known to them. On the one hand they quite legitimately refer to that reputation for greatness which God alone deserves, not only because of his natural position as king, but because of his unsurpassed activity as deliverer and savior. However, as the preceding discussion indicates, something more is intended here. It is not merely God’s reputation which fills the earth, but it is the very reality of his presence. And his desire is that all persons may gladly recognize and own this. His first step toward the achievement of these goals was to fill the tabernacle with his presence and then the temple. But nowhere is the reality and the splendor of his presence and his character seen as in his son (Isa 4:2). Here the near-blinding quality of his glory is fully portrayed, “We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only son of the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14; cf. 17:1–5). Through him and through his presence in the church, God’s glory is indeed filling the earth (from The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament).

So to re-write this verse: “...defying and provoking His glorious eyes.”

To use the term from attachment theory- “...defying and rejecting the relational beauty of the mutual gaze transactions with the Father.”

In attachment theory noted in Affect Regulation by Allan Schore, the most potent of early stimuli for proper infant brain development is the stimuli of the eye-to-eye contact and the mutual gaze transactions. It is the mother’s eyes that communicate many wonderful things into the brain of her infant. “Sustained facial gazing mediates the most intense from of interpersonal communication. The gaze, the eye-to-eye contact, gives nonverbal advance notice of the other. The structure of gaze is the most immediate and purest form of interrelation. The gaze provides clues to the readiness or capacity to receive and produce social information.” If that is the way You created the conduct and behavior of mother to infant, then I would suspect that You are looking for this same kind of interaction with Your children. Especially since in this verse, You use the term "eye". We have translated it “presence” and I can understand why. But from attachment theology, eye makes more sense. And the reason it makes more sense is because of the amount of information that is communicated through eye-to-eye contact. You are very eager to get important and valuable information communicated to me.

You use the term "glorious" to describe Your eyes. And that means weighty. That is, heavy in regard to its impact on me. Your eyes are something to take into the highest of regard. Your eyes are not slight. They are the most profound experience possible. And again, from attachment theology I know why. It is the eyes that tell me what is going on inside Your heart and mind regarding me. It is the eyes that tell me how You feel about me. It is the eyes that have a direct communication to my brain.

“Central foveal vision is important to the establishment of a primary attachment to the mother. The child fixates directly on the visible portion of the mother’s central nervous system, her eyes, which specifically reflect the activity and state of her right hemisphere, the area that is dominant for gaze behavior. The infant utilizes the mother’s expressed “optimal level of stimulation” as a template for the programming of the optimal level of stimulation for the development of his own brain.” (Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self, by Allan Schore)

(It is no wonder that the nation of Israel stumbled and fell so disastrously. They rejected the beautiful smiling face of the most perfect attachment figure ever. They did not want to look into the glorious eyes of the gleaming Father. I guess I do the same thing.)

Your eyes establish attachment and allow me to fixate upon Your mind and heart. And what can be seen there is of foremost and utmost importance. What You are intending to communicate to me is the exceeding glory of Your relational beauty. You want eye to eye contact because through that form of communication, You can transfer so much information about how You feel about me. It is the most immediate and purest form of interrelation. It is the most simple way for You to get Yourself across to me. A smiling face can say more to me than a thousand theological terms. And it is directly into me, into my brain where memories and representations can be formed about You. And then those representations can create mental maps and mental models about how life can be with You loving me and being a secure base relationally for me.

Okay, so how do I “see” Your eyes? How do I enter into a mutual gaze transaction with You? I wish Jesus were here now. I could look into His eyes. To “see” Your eyes requires several things: imagination, experiencing You based on Your revealed truth, seeing the faces of other people with the same intentions that You have, solitude, quietness, receptiveness to the glory of grace in a facial expression.

Enough for now. I want to flesh this out more over the next several days.