Mirror

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in the mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it-- he will be blessed in what he does.

- James 1:22-25

I'm taking two art history classes: one that's fantastic, and one that should be fantastic but isn't, but we won't get into that today. In the fantastic one (Gender Issues and Feminism in Art History) we go into a lot of psychoanalytic theories that sometimes seem valid and sometimes just seem fundamen-

-tally empty. The other day, as we discussed Tintoretto's painting "Susannah and the Elders" (right), my professor lectured on the significance of mirrors in art. In the context of deriving pleasure from a film or a painting through the process of identification--that is, putting yourself in the place of the central figure or protagonist-- a mirror prompts us to expect to see kind of a "better" version of ourselves in the art. If you can't tell, I love the class, but it can be over my head.

I like how James aligns the word with a mirror. The further I go into this weird thing we do (love, pray to, struggle with, accept forgiveness from, rail against, be humbled by, and ultimately, worship the holy and eternal God), the more I can see His word as a mirror. And we do look to it to see a better version of ourselves-- the spotless and redeemed version, the true version, rather than the guilty, violent version that we are without Jesus. May we look intently into the word and see our true selves there: may we not forget what we look like.

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ALSO:

If you ever wanted to see my non-touristy photography from Italia (aka, everything that's NOT on facebook), I uploaded some of the ones I'm pleased with to flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/throughtherye/