NEVER LEARNING
We were delighted when a pair of starlings picked the eaves of our house to build their nest. We watched in awe as daily their woven masterpiece of twigs and moss took shape into a solid safe haven against high winds and driving rain. The hatching of two baby chicks turned us into a couple of cooing admirers, baby talk gushing out of our mouths. ‘Look at that little squidgy fluffy bundle: it’s soooo cutesy wootsie’, I, an adult person, remarked to Kay. ‘I know, and listen to the little baby chirping for its Mummy!’, she replied.
It was all rather lovely until the early morning head-butting began. Each sunrise, we were awakened by the sound of daddy-bird – I mean the male starling – hurtling himself at speed against our bedroom windowpane. He peered at the glass, attacked it, momentarily recovered from what was probably a nasty headache and a corrugated beak, and then repeated the whole performance. This went on for about an hour, until the exhausted feathered fighter pilot popped off, presumably for an aspirin and a nap. And he was not the only one who was tired. Our daily dawn wake-up calls turned us into a couple of red-eyed ex-nest admirers who fantasised about showing papa birdy-wordy the business end of a shotgun (don’t write in, I jest).
Extensive ornithological research (thirty seconds on Google) revealed that our bruised and bewildered friend was not doing this because he had had a bad experience with a double-glazing salesman. Rather, he saw his own reflection mirrored in our window, and, thinking that he had spotted a predator, launched into the flurry of attack. He saw himself – and he sensed danger. He never seemed to learn from his headache, but continued the madness.
That got me thinking. As I tap-tap at my computer now, I hear once again that dull, repetitive thudding, and I wonder what I see when I stare into the mirror – at me. Looking beyond the superficiality of mere looks (for I too am blessed with a corrugated nose), I wonder if I tend to spot the reflection of a good, godly person called Jeff, someone who is basically upright and moral? Perhaps, at times I look at myself with arrogance and pride, especially when I hear of the embarrassing failure or the unspeakable evil of another. Appalled by them and momentarily glad to be me, I become like the Queen in the Snow White fairy-tale, with a ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’ attitude. I tut-tut at others’ sins, and silently pronounce that I could never, ever fail as they have failed, and I become haughty and judge them harshly. But, worse than that, perhaps I fool myself.
Surely you and I should realise that the reflection staring back at us is a mingling of grace and grime. God has touched our lives, and made us capable of greatness and love, sensitivity and sacrifice. And yet we can also wound, betray, and perhaps be guilty even of staggering crimes.
Isabel Allende describes her realisation of this in her book Paula1 .. She says,
‘Sometimes, when I was alone in some secret place on the hill with some time to think, I again saw the black waters of the mirrors of my childhood where Satan peered out at night, and as I leaned towards the glass, I realized, with horror, that the Evil One had my face. I was not unsullied, no one was: a monster crouched in each of us, every one of us had a dark and fiendish side. Given the conditions, could I torture and kill? Let us say, for example, that someone harmed my children… what cruelty would I be capable of in that situation? The demons had escaped from the mirrors and were running loose through the world…’
Knowing that we can each be both Beauty and Beast should make us a little more willing to realistically assess our fragilities and weaknesses, and make us a lot more gracious when others stumble. They are but fellow travellers, companions with us in the holy struggle. Together we daily fight the fallen human condition. We can, in turn, be both predators and saints.
Pecking at my own reflection is a bad, senseless habit. But I do want to learn to look at myself with a mixture of gratitude and sobriety. That will surely save me from some of sin’s madness, and will help me look at others with softer, kinder eyes.
1 Isabel Allende, Paula (New York: Harper Perennial 2008), p23