A Room Full of Mirrors

by the Rev. Dr. Delmer Chilton
Southeastern Synod Assistant to the Bishop

Every once in a long while in my reading, a sentence, a line, a phrase leaps off the page and grabs my attention and won't let me go. It happened most recently while reading Peter Hessler's fascinating account of his road trips in modern China, Country Driving.

Hessler picked up an old man and his granddaughter, Wang Yan, in Inner Mongolia. They drove to a town where the young woman is a stylist at a hair salon. When he dropped them off, Hessler helped carry their bags into the shop. He describes the scene there:

Four young men and women were working, and they greeted Wang Yan warmly. The man had the look of small-town hipsters; their hair was long and they wore leather jackets covered with zippers. It was too early for customers and they put a Madonna disc in the video player. A full-length mirror ran along one wall, and the employees pushed aside the barber chairs and practiced dance moves. They were focused on their reflections, repeating the steps over and over, trying to get it right. At the far end of the shop Wang Yan leaned close to another mirror, fixing her road-worn hair and makeup. The grandfather stood alone near the door. Upon entering the shop he had fallen silent, and now he watched the young people intently, his face expressionless. In a room full of mirrors he was the only person not staring at himself.

"In a room full of mirrors he was the only person not staring at himself." That phrase flew out of that room and off of that page and into my head and into my heart. It struck me with an almost physical force, like a slap across the emotional face. "Who am I in this story?” I thought. "Am I in a room full of mirrors, staring at myself? Or am I calmly taking in the world, observing my neighbors and their needs?"

All too often our spirituality turns inward. We find ourselves in a religious room full of mirrors. How often have you heard someone say, "Oh, I left that church, I just wasn't getting fed." Or, "I'm looking for a new church that has the kind of programs I'm looking for." Or, "I visited that church but I don't think I'll go back; there just didn't seem to be many people there with whom I had anything in common."

Books on "Being a Better (Mom, Dad, Son, Daughter, Teacher, Mentor, Business Person, etc., etc., --- you fill in the blank)" fill the shelves of Christian bookstores. As I ride the highways of the South I see church sign after church sign advertizing sermon series on "Seven Biblical Principles" for this or that personal improvement. It never seems to end.

And my own specialty, Spiritual Direction, can easily shift away from seeking to quiet the self in order to hear God's voice into admiring how well the self is doing at the techniques of spiritual listening. It's a vicious circle and the world is full of mirrors tempting us to focus on the self rather than the other.

The Gospel calls us to follow the lead of Wang Yan's grandfather in not staring at ourselves. The Gospel calls us to love and serve our neighbors, to turn our eyes and hearts away from self-absorption so that we may be consumed by the love of God and centered on service to others.

The recent tornados and floods that have wreaked havoc on parts of the four states of our synod have given us a wake-up call that now is not the time to be moodily staring into the mirrors of our souls, either individually or as a church community. Now is a time for action, now is a time to turn away from fretting over our own spiritual state and to start working to relieve the very real physical and emotional suffering of others.

Because, as Jesus said, "Those who save their life will lose it and those who lose their lives for me and the Gospel will find it." It will be in turning away from self-centered mirrors to the needs of those around us that we will first forget ourselves and then, finally, find out who we really are.