Imagining the Lectionary: This will be a sign for you (Advent 4C / Christmas Eve / Christmas Day)

Imagining the Lectionary:
This will be a sign for you (Advent 4C / Christmas Eve / Christmas Day)

Reflection accompanying images: “Cracked mirror ” and “Cracked mirror with shard showing womans face ”

In the centre of town, fenced off in a demolition site awaiting redevelopment, the sole surviving interior wall of a once private washroom is now open to the elements. Set above the rotting surround for a pair of long removed hand washbasins, two mirrors reflect the immediate
surroundings. Their surfaces bear the marks of violence,  exhibiting the tell-tale signs of impact damage. This could have occurred as the building was being demolished, or it might bear testimony to rocks, bricks or stones thrown by vandals at such an easy and tempting target afterwards. Like razor sharp spider webs, spun within the structure of the glass, the crazed and splintered patterns look like their sole purpose is to capture meaning and prevent it escaping from the mirrored surface intact.  Such violence has achieved its aim: the picture is disjointed, broken, distorted, difficult to interpret or see as a unified and intelligible whole.  The shattered mirrors convey the truth of the world's brokenness and suffering. Everywhere violence inhibits us from seeing the picture of a world perfectly reflecting the love of God.  Violence breaks up the image, smashes it into sharp-edged pieces which hurt and harm.  Violence splinters meaning and traps our perception into falsely chaotic and hope-denying mindsets. Across the world the mirror of everyday experience is shattered daily by violence.

Continues...