Mirror, mirror on the wall, am I looking at my reflection?

Noble-prize winning Caribbean poet, Derek Walcott, published “Love after Love” in Sea Grapes, 1976.

One of my favorite poems is Derek Walcott's "Love After Love." I've read it often, used it to begin listening circles, aka group spiritual direction, and offered the words via text to reflect on heart matters. A response to the poem that sticks with me is: "This is not unlike an onion-layer, some thin, some thick, some easy to peel and others not so much. But tears nonetheless flow."

"Love After Love" is a poem that demands contemplative reading. Slowing down and re-reading twice a third time deepens the experience and peels back the layers. As I read this poem for the umpteenth time, this time, the word "mirror" stopped me. "Mirror" appears in the fourth and third line of the poem's first and final stanza, respectively. In the first stanza, the mirror invites the reader to greet themselves as they arrive in their "own mirror" and "smile" at their reflection, becoming themselves.

"The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

The final stanza suggests that after you have sat awhile, seeing yourself, giving back "your heart to itself," you can then "peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life."  A self-image that has become a stranger tucked away in "love letters," "photographs," and "desperate notes." The narrator suggests we can be a stranger to ourselves if we have not taken the time to arrive, greet, and welcome who we see in the mirror. We can look in the mirror and forget who we were, who we are, what we think about ourselves, and perhaps our beliefs and how our beliefs form our identity. Especially when the perception of ourselves is based on what others think and believe about us.

I wrestled and rested with the word "mirror"— an object that reflects the image of the person gazing into it. The mirror can frame the perspective of one's image, in which the mirror gaze can cause pride and jealousy rather than a "smile" and "welcome."

Image from SisterlyLove on Wordpress.

I am reminded of the magical, mystical "looking-glass," "hand mirror," or "wall mirror" in the classic Brother Grimms German folklore retold as a Westernized fairy tale. You know, the one where the beautiful, proud, and spiteful" queen ritualistically looks into a magic mirror and queries: "Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?"  In other translations, she asks: "Looking-glass, Looking-glass, on the wall,/ Who in this land is the fairest of all?" "Tell me, glass, tell me true!/ Of all the ladies in the land,/ Who is the fairest? Tell me who?"

One day, she receives an unexpected answer from the mirror that cannot lie: someone else is lovelier, more beautiful, and more attractive than she is. The magical mirror no longer validates and reassures the queen's obsession with her own beauty. The queen turns green with envy of the young girl's beauty. The spirit of jealousy overtakes her, and she focuses on destroying the truth. The queen's discontent and insecurity toward the young girl imprisons her into a fit of hatefulness. She believes the girl threatens her self-esteem. The queen's thoughts and actions turn murderous with intent to kill the young girl. The queen tries to establish a truth by going against the mirror's verdict.

What if the queen's response to the magical, mystical mirror was hospitality, community, and friendship toward the young girl rather than hate and green-eyed envy? What if the queen had greeted herself in her "own mirror" with a welcoming "smile," as Walcott's poem suggests? What if the queen accepted that she was no longer the fairest of all and reached back to love who she was right then?

The queen's actions and thoughts show how we can live and die by the authority of the mirror, an object that reflects the image of the person gazing into it, or we can unconsciously be framed by it, like the young girl.

I wrestled and rested with the word "mirror" in Walcott's poem. The invitation is to love yourself, who you are, and who God has created you to be without comparing yourself to another. Self-love. I wrestle with the mirror image as the reflection of someone else's life, successes, or achievements. A reflection that is not beneficial and often does not capture the reality of one's existence. How often do we view ourselves through the mirror image of others instead of our "own mirror"? — Own is a possessive adjective that means belonging to oneself. — It's too easy to get locked into the mirror image of "someone's supposedly better body, better relationship, better job, better house, better something" rather than peer into our "own mirror," our innermost self, our heart.

In the New Testament Book of James 4:2, the author points to wanting something you do not have. "We fight deep inside ourselves, we covet, we are willing to kill, we cause conflicts, and we risk violence to get our hands on what we want." A devious heart does not reflect self-love. A devious heart cannot see the divine within who God has made them to be.

Photo by allison-saeng-Zo9FjlFUOKM from Unsplash.

Yet still, the word "mirror" stops me with a restful pause. The narrator says, "The time will come/when, with elation, /you will greet yourself arriving /at your own door, in your own mirror/and each will smile at the other's welcome."

The time is when we "sit and feast on our life." When we lean into who God has called us to be, with our flaws, faults, and missteps, youthful and aging beauty, or seasoned and novice wisdom, when our life is filled with gratitude and thanks despite our own joys and sorrows, victories and defeats, sufferings and contentment.

It's a process.

The circular structure of "Love after Love" reflects a heart journey that points to a process that takes time to look at one's "own" reflection in one's "own mirror" with delight, joy, enthusiasm, glee, buoyance, and high spirits. To gaze at one's reflection without self-judgment, scrutiny, or egotism is "the time when you greet yourself arriving "at your own door, in your own mirror/" and gracefully smile as you welcome the mirror image that reflects the divine within because you have given back to your heart love, peace, and grace.

When I read this poem, the word "mirror" stops me because it's an inward spiritual experience that begins in one place, looking at yourself in the mirror, and then journeys away from the truth, forgetting who we were, who we are, or who we are becoming, circling back to the beginning by peeling "your own image from the mirror” and letting the tears flow.

We all need a contemplative moment to gaze in our own mirror and ask ourselves, "Am I looking at my reflection?"

What word stops you when you read "Love after Love"?