Hall of Mirrors

Nine days. Nine days since I settled in the Francis Marion’s cozy couch, swathed in my fuzzy sweater, holding Judi Dench’s book about Shakespeare in my lap, surrounded by CiRCE friends. Nine days since we worshiped and listened and talked and grew together with these precious people from across the country. Nine days since my husband and I took in the face of Prudence, displayed through such diverse life-giving perspectives, many-faceted, balancing and sharpening each other. Nine days since we sang, “We Rest on Thee,” and gave farewell hugs. Nine days since we left the hotel and walked to Charleston Harbor, glorying in the double rainbow hovering over Fort Sumter. Nine days since we drove home, descending from the shimmering clouds to the battleground.

That’s really what prudence is: descending from the heights, having seen what is true, and taking that wisdom down into dirty, jumbled, messy life, knowing which way to go next. I would love to live in the realm of contemplation, basking in the warm glow of ideas, but ideas which are never put to the test, do not build the kingdom of heaven on earth. Contemplation is essential. Perhaps contemplation is even “the one thing” that Mary was not to have taken from her. But we must carry our contemplation with us in a way that it affects our behavior. As one of my dear friends humbly and joyously reminded me in church yesterday, James said we must not be like a man who looks into a mirror and then walks away, immediately forgetting what he looks like, but rather we must be doers of the word, doers of the ideas we have seen and heard and contemplated.

That is easier said than done. As soon as I returned home from the conference, children began vying for my attention, laundry beckoned its cold finger of doom, and hungry people clamored for dinner. My memory of the image in the mirror dimmed. I had looked into the perfect law of liberty, seen truly, and the next step, what I needed in that moment, was to remember. To not let any other reflection distract me from what I had seen. In the moments of nitty gritty life, we all need to see ourselves truly, to know our proper place in the world. We all so desperately need to look into Prudence’s mirror, and if we do, that image will provoke us to act. Like Aeneas, who walked into combat without fear because he had been given true sight to know who he was and what he was about. He pursued the wife he knew he had been given. He fought for the land that was destined to be his. He saw the ending and so did not fear or become discouraged along the path that led there.

Prudence also means that we are not shaken by others around us functioning in their proper places. How often do we hand out mirrors to the people around us? Wherever we look, what we see is ourselves. We look most interestedly at how our actions ricochet off people, we listen most intently when we are noticing how they respond to our words, we care most deeply about how we measure up in their estimation. But these are not the mirrors into which we are called to look. The perfect law of liberty reflects back to us the image of God, redeemed from the curse, set free to be a participant in the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. We are created to be a living symbol of the God-Who-Sees, whose love elicits love. We do not need anyone else’s approbation when we know the God-Who-Sees.

My daughter and I read Plato together a few months ago, and I was struck by the notion that a true king does not have needs. He is able to pour out to his people precisely because he is not grasping. To our God “belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it,” and He has set His affections on us (Deuteronomy 10). When the mirror reflects us truly, we recognize that all our needs are met, and we are set free. When we look out at the community surrounding us, prudence frees us to see others, rather than a distorted reflection of ourselves.

Our pastor has a recurring admonition: “Be almost impossible to offend, and utterly impossible to flatter.” It’s the mean between the extremes, the two sides of the same coin, which, I would argue, is prudence. To see oneself and others rightly does not allow room for offense or flattery. But we really do not like true mirrors. We put filters on our phone photos, choose our lighting carefully, angle our bodies to the camera so our good side shows. We often shy away from friends who are blunt and direct, especially when that blunt and direct friend happens to be married to us and can probably more truly reflect ourselves back to us than anyone else could. Someone at the conference commented that Prudence is not the only figure in art who holds a mirror; Vanity also gazes. I have thought much about this. Perhaps repentance makes all the difference. We gaze into the perfect law of liberty in order to see clearly, with hearts full of repentance. We tend to fear seeing ourselves truly only when we forget we are loved for who we are, or that Love, in mercy, does not leave us there. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love,” (1 John 4:18). We gaze in order to be changed.

I pray that we all will gaze into the mirror of Prudence with hearts full of repentance, ready to be changed more fully into the image of the God-Who-Sees. I pray that we will be true mirrors of God’s glory to the world around us. I pray that we will be like the wise man who builds his house on the rock, who hears the words of the Word and acts. I pray that we will all move from a Contemplation of Prudence into prudent doing of the Word, continually gazing and always remembering as we act in faith.