Article September 3, 2007 Issue

LESSONS from a MIRROR

BY MARGRET ULLRICH

Some time ago, when I was living in a former apartment, I bought a mirrored wall closet for my bedroom. It was located opposite two windows that looked out onto a park-like garden.

The mirrors opened up the room and created a completely different atmosphere. The room became bright with light, reflecting the sun, the sky, and the shimmering treetops. When I wanted to look out onto the garden, I could just as well look at the opposite wall. The clearer and cleaner the mirror surface was, the clearer and brighter the light, sky, and colors of the garden appeared in the reflection.

Since then, I've given a lot of prayerful thought to the spiritual implications of the word reflection. The experience with my closet caused me to equate reflection with openness and expansion. I knew that opening up and expanding thought can also create an enlarged mental space where limitations are lifted and we find freedom from worries, suffering, or lack, that would attempt to restrict our joy and our expectations for life. I remembered the first account of creation in the book of Genesis in the Bible where God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (1:26). Since God created us in His "image," that implies that we are actually reflection—reflections of the one infinite Spirit.