Who doesn’t like a good reflection? To see the exact image of something captured on another completely different material is a pleasing sight. When I go out with my camera, I am a sucker for capturing a good reflection, although they can be hard to get without including myself.
But some reflections I am not so keen on, because what I see reflected back is not what I particularly want to see! Every morning I look in the bathroom mirror and I care less and less to see my reflection. I hardly recognise the face looking back at me. Wrinkled forehead, a deep crease in either cheek, receding greying hair. Not at all what I want to see and not at all what I want other people to see. I want my face to reflect youthful vibrancy, to be attractive, to be in the words of someone else, “the fairest of them all.” Of course, that questioner didn’t get the answer she was looking for either as the mirror told her there was another fairer than she. It is something we all face despite our best efforts; the reality is there will always be someone fairer than us!
A while ago I got what’s left of my hair cut by an attractive young woman. As we were chatting about the weather and other safe subjects suddenly out of the blue, she asked me if I thought her lips looked alright? Were they fat enough? The question took me aback as I had not considered her lips, or for that matter anyone else’s. Can lips be the wrong size? What do the perfect lips look like? I wasn’t sure. I surveyed her lips they looked like well, lips. I reassured her that they looked fine, although I am not sure if my words of encouragement helped her, I could tell she doubted my credentials. The woman told me every month her roommate gets a Botox injection to plump up her lips, but she thought that was going too far, but still she worried about her lips. Did they reflect well? As I looked in the mirror the next morning, I surveyed my lips. Plump enough? Something else to worry about in my reflection? I decided my lips were the least of my concerns.
When we see something reflecting back to us we don’t like we have two options. We can either change the subject or we can change the mirror. Sometimes we can change the subject, but oftentimes we can’t. Even when we can, change is hard and difficult, costly even. But changing the mirror is easier. Fortunately, today, unlike when the wicked queen was around, we are not limited to one speaking mirror. If only she had had a smart phone, she would have got an affirmative answer and left poor Snow White alone with the dwarves.
The mirrors we use most today aren’t above our sinks but resides in our purses and pockets. They tell us what we want to hear. I am the fairest person in the land; life revolves around me and I am indispensable to the functioning of the world. My phone reflects to me I am the most knowledgeable, best looking, funniest person around. And I believe it because it is the reflection I want to see and hear. It knows the reflections I want to see, and the algorithm is designed to increasingly feed my ego. Moreover, I can use the mirror in my pocket to project the reflection I want the world around me to see. I don’t need to actually go and get Botox injections, I can simply photoshop my lips, hair, checks and anything else to show my perfection. I carefully curate the reflection I want you to see of me and I suspect you are doing the same. But that brings us to whose reflection can I believe? What can I trust to be a true likeness? The reflection you give to me? The reflection I give to myself? It’s one thing to know when our reflections are distorted and not real, like when we go to the house of mirrors at the fair which make us look ridiculously tall or wide. But we don’t come away believing what we saw. We laugh at ourselves and each other because we know what we see is not really a true reflection of us. If we thought it was, we wouldn’t laugh nearly as hard, yet isn’t that exactly the reflection we get from our phones, social media and indeed our culture in general; a complete distortion. We have looked at these reflections and mistaken them for reality.
One of the things seeing a reflection is supposed to help us do is well, reflect. That is think deeply about what we see and where we fit in. What is the refection telling us?
Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” he spoke these words when the Athenians put him on trial for reflecting too much on life and in ways they did not appreciate, so they eliminated him. Not much has changed in the thousands of years since he lived, we still don’t like it when another’s reflection overshadows our own.
Fall Creek
I live near the Cascade mountain range, with access to numerous trails, which I used to run but now although the spirit is willing the body isn’t so much and mostly I hike. There is one trail in particular I have enjoyed over the years. It winds its way up from a lake following a stream rushing down through the forest in the opposite direction. In places it is steep with switchbacks, but in others it is gentler where the stream is leisurely and inviting. After six miles or more you emerge out from the trees into a high basin where several blue-green lakes are nestled. I particularly like to get up there early in the morning, because it is cooler in the summer and uncrowded, but also, I want to see the sunrise. On a still morning when there is no breeze to disturb the water, as the sun climbs behind the mountain and before it peaks over the top, it casts a perfect shadow of the mountain on the calm water. By comparison my reflection looks small and insignificant, so I take a photo of the scene and post it to my social media to use nature’s reflection to bolster my own. But this surely is a distortion. While it is a wonderful thing to share beautiful images, they are not given to us to impress those around us as if we had anything to do with their creation or even discovery, but to remind us of something more than ourselves, to break through our curated images and point us to a greater reality.
South Sister and Green Lakes
Antoni Gaudi was a Catalonian architect who worked in the late 19th and early 20th century. He reflected deeply on nature, its intricacies and design, incorporating it into his buildings which you can see in Barcelona today. Apparently, Gaudi thought that especially those living in towns and cities who no longer daily saw creation reflected around them needed a reminder, because without it’s reflection we lose our bearings in life; who we are, where we are going, and why we are here.
But like Gaudi’s buildings, just seeing a reflection of nature doesn’t really tell you your place unless you see a creator behind it. Gaudi reflected nature but he also wanted to reflect the creator behind it. All the reflections we have from nature in this world point to the creator if we are just willing to stop and notice and stop appropriating them for ourselves.
In her poem “Signals” Luci Shaw notices and reflects.
I think I saw an edge of God
looking sideways at me.
There were my initials in the sand
like a lover’s declaration.
He nudged me, asking if
I’d noticed. Later
he showed me himself as a
honeycomb with bees,
and when I didn’t respond
he presented me with
a hillside of trees with
red and yellow leaves, and
finally I understood and
wrote him this thank-you note.[1]
Thousands of years before Luci Shaw wrote her poem the psalmist wrote:
1 The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Psalm 19:1–3 (ESV)
It doesn’t matter what language we speak or where we live, creation speaks in a tongue we can all understand, and it reflects a creator if we are only willing to listen and see. We don’t even have to be able to walk through woods or sit by lakes and streams to get this reflection, or build houses with scenes of nature intertwined, it is there even in the heart of a city if we stop and look. Golden leaves in autumn covering the pavement, a sparkling winter frost, the chirp of birds welcoming spring, or a long warm summer evening. They all reflect to us something more than our own small worlds, something bigger which we are a part of if we are watching and listening. C. S. Lewis calls these moments “patches of Godlight.”
“Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.”[2]
Hidden away in the gothic quarter of Barcelona is an attraction which isn’t hundreds of years old but a mere 10 years; inaugurated in 2014. It is a mural of a kiss, two pairs of Botox free lips meeting. But the picture is actually more than what it first appears, because on closer inspection you see it is in fact a mosaic of individual pictures on tiles – 4,000 of them to be exact. The artist Joan Fontcuberta asked Catalan residents to send in a image of themselves sharing “a moment of freedom” to remember the tricentenary fall of Barcelona. Many have to do with moments on the beach and in the sea, but others are picture of groups of friends and family. They are all “patches of Godlight.”
The Kiss of Freedom
The most famous building Antoni Gaudi designed and built is the church Sagrada Familia. It is a stunning piece of architecture and true to Gaudi’s style incorporates nature into its design. For Gaudi, creation can’t be separated from its creator. Before we entered our guide asked the group how many of us were familiar with the story of the New Testament. How many would say they know the story well? A few hands went up. How many would say they know some? A lot more hands went up. How many not at all? Again quite a few hands were raised. “This building” she said, “is designed to tell the story of the New Testament so you can read it without words.” The east side of the church tells the story of the nativity. The guide pointed out the various carvings and statues depicting the scenes of the annunciation, the birth of Jesus, the presentation of Jesus in the temple and the visit of the shepherds and wise men. After we had seen and admired all there was to see we moved inside where we were bathed in multi-colour light. After spending some time exploring the inside, we moved out again to the east side of the building to see the rest of New Testament story.
Sagrada Familia
This is the passion side where Jesus’ suffering is depicted in separate scenes showing his betrayal, trial, crucifixion, death and burial.
It is a truly stunning structure which is still under construction over 100 years after Gaudi began, and by the time it’s finished the main spire will make it the tallest church in the world. As I walked, I reflected on what I had seen. Whose story was I bringing away with me?
Antoni Gaudi had a rather ignominious end. Throughout his life his work came before all else; he never married or had a family, and for the last fifteen years or so, he secluded himself in his workshop at the Sagrada, pouring himself into its construction. He seldom ventured outside, except being a devout Roman Catholic he made the trip every day to pray and celebrate mass at the church of St. Philip Neri. On the 7th of June 1926 as he walked to church, he was hit by a tram. The famous architect lay dying in the street, but because of his unkempt appearance no one recognised him, in fact he was taken for a beggar and therefore no one rushed to help him. He was eventually transported to a “hospital” where he received minimal care as they waited for him to die. A couple of days later someone visiting the hospital recognised him and he was transferred to a better hospital but by then it was too late, and he died. Barcelona had lost its most famous and cherished architect, and the irony was that although his buildings are recognised, he wasn’t. Still, Gaudi’s work remains as a testimony, a reflection of his life. Perhaps that is the best any of us can do, although for most of us the pinnacles of our achievements will hardly rise high enough to be noticed. That’s our story; eat, drink, plump your lips and be merry because this is as good as it gets.
Sagrada Familia Tomb
How about Jesus’ story? Did it end in a tomb? If that is where Jesus’ story ended, then it’s not much help. He died an ignominious death too, a man of good intentions but who stepped out in front of the juggernaut of the religious establishment of his time and paid the price because they didn’t like what He was reflecting. Thousands of churches have been built in memory of Him but how many really reflect who He is?
The part of the story our guide didn’t talk about, and indeed there were hardly any statutes and carvings to reflect it, is Jesus’ story didn’t end in a tomb because three days later when the stone sealing it was rolled away it wasn’t the sunlight shining in which caused those who witnessed its emptiness to reflect but the “godlight” flooding out, It changed everything. If Jesus is alive then death doesn’t have to be our final reflection, we can see past our image and in faith take on His reflection. The immortal reflecting on the mortal. It is the most pleasing reflection of all.
[1] Shaw, Luci, “The Eye of the Beholder” Brewster MA. 2018. p17
[2] C.S Lewis. Letter to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. London: Geoffrey Bless, 1964
