I’ll Be Your Mirror

This title is taken from a song title sung by the Velvet Underground and Nico. The song opens like this:
I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don't know.

I often write about Jesus being the mirror for us to see God (both through him and in others).  I like this metaphor because it keeps our focus where it can be the most effective, both for personal and public well-being. This is not an original thought by any stretch of the imagination. But while I don't claim it as my own, I cannot think of a better way to see God then how God revealed God's self to us through Christ.

Others have written that nature is the mirror in which we all come to see God, or at least God's creative imagination.  St. Paul wrote to the churches in Rome, that thanks to the world around us we have no excuse to not know God (Romans 1:20). While I do not disagree, we must accept that this too  includes both the good (sunsets, snowfall, and butterflies) and the bad (hurricanes, fires, and human nature).

During the season of Epiphany, scripture and the world around us, our eyes are called to be open to see God in our midst, in whatever way God wishes to reveal God's self to us. As a wise man once said, there is no length that God won't go to open our eyes and our hearts to divine truth. 

Thomas Merton,the father of modern mysticism, had this to say:

“Man [sic] is the image of God, and his inner self is a kind of mirror in which God not only sees Himself, but reveals Himself to the ‘mirror’ in which He is reflected.”  
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When we seek to live and see contemplatively, with an intention of being One with God,  we begin to discover that everything is an epiphany.  We begin to see God in not only in people, or places, but also in poems and songs, art and commerce, and in life and even death. 

So next time you look in the mirror picking yourself apart because your skin is not as tight as it used to be, or you have unwanted hair where it ought not be growing, or a lack of hair where it ought to be...that about what really is being reflected from that face staring back. 

After all, that is what other's first see. ​

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