About the face was a gold-tinged blackness...

The voyage into self is long and dark and full of peril, but I believe that it is a voyage that all of us will have to make before we are through. Either we climb down into the abyss willingly with our eyes open, or we risk falling into it with our eyes closed. I believe that if we search ourselves deeply enough, we will begin to see at last who we really are, we will begin to see, very dimly at first, our own true faces. And then, although on the surface the fever may rage still, I believe that a strange calm does begin to come, a peace that passes understanding.

Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark