Thoughts on Narcissus and our humanity
They lay my babe, quiet, his skin still red and white and mottled from being cut from my womb. Roughly scrubbed. Eyes screwed up tight against the world. They lay my babe into my arms. I looked deeply upon his perfection, and I felt anchored, whole, real. “I am” because “You are.”
Our children are the reflecting pool God gives us to see ourselves, if we are brave enough to look.
But we are foolish, and fragile, and made of this earth. We are human, and we fell. And we seek to be anchored in our reality in easier ways than through the love of another, the creation of a child, the work of raising a hu’man. So…
I stare at a picture of myself. Someone has managed a picture of me. I dislike images of myself, and yet it’s hard to look away. “I am” present, real, and reflected on this little electronic device.
But what am I? My own “I am” is not Christ’s. When He uttered those words, “I am,” that was wholly all, infinitely here. Infinitely present. With us in all ways, seen and unseen. What am I, and what are you? What are any of us when we seek to anchor ourselves? To see ourselves? When we introspect.
Our society provides us with a million reflecting pools. We have all become Narcissus. We seek to establish our presence in the world through images that please and flatter our own egos, our own pride. Innocently seeking the approval and applause of an unseen audience of others, who are in turn seeking their own acknowledgement of their “I am.”
The reflecting pools that God has given us require effort, are sometimes showing us angles we wish not to see. God gives us our children. He gives us our elders. He gives us the trust of animals. The care of this earth. Who we are is reflected in how we care, how we love, how we humble ourselves before Him and all He has created.
But. That’s difficult. That is hard. It’s easier and more gratifying in the moment to see ourselves in a flattering light. To disappear into our screens. To forget our children, and provide them with their own reflecting pools and teach them to become self absorbed. And when, (there is always a when) our conscience mutters to us that it’s not right to see our own children so absorbed in the study of themselves, we point and we blame, but we never take a moment to recognize that Child is our own reflection showing us what we must do to improve. What we have become.
We are all of us Narcissus. Those who would shout, “I am not! Look at my good deeds. Look at all I do for others!” and then list those good deeds, filming themselves helping the homeless; filming themselves nurturing the hungry, the despondent, the ill, are still only seeking to satiate the gnawing hunger inside their bones to feel that anchor. To know that They Are.
Have we so forgotten that God sees us all? He sees us with our downturned faces. He sees us staring and starting hungrily into our own reflections. Jesus warned us of this. That we are not seeing, truly, as God would have us, that we are not seeing with love; we see with judgement, we see for self enhancement, entitlement and pride.
The whisper of the Devil is forever in our ears, and we have built a world where the echo of his voice hollows us out; empties us from the fulfillment that God can provide.
When we delve into our reflecting pool, can we find God there? How to escape the comfortable labyrinth we have built that keeps us hungry; ravenous for more evidence that We Are? Perhaps. Perhaps we should take time to look into the face of others. Take time to look in wonder and awe at all of God’s creations. Touch and feel and live and love without our handheld devices, our reflecting pools, to take pictures, to imprison our selves into the sticky resin of our ego.