In my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face. …It has something to do with incarnation. …Any human face is a claim on you, because you can’t help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any.
From Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.