Are you one of those people who never come out well in photographs? When you look through the prints, do you find yourself saying, ‘This is quite good of Uncle, and the photographer has caught Auntie’s expression exactly – but that one isn’t a bit like me!’
    How do you know? They say that the camera cannot lie so who are we to believe? The trouble is that you have never actually seen yourself.
    ‘Rubbish’, I hear you say, ‘I see myself every time I look in a mirror.’ But you don’t see yourself as the camera sees you; in the mirror you only see yourself back to front: you may part your hair on the right and wear a button-hole in the left lapel of your jacket, but the mirror shows you someone with a parting on the left and a button-hole on the right, and so on. Not a very comforting thought, is it, to realise that the photograph really is more like you than the face you see in the mirror.
    Why do I say all this? Because this page is headed ‘Reflections’, and we must decide exactly what that means. The dictionary gives us a wide choice: from the scientific use in electromagnetism to the plain ‘image in a mirror’; but it also gives us ‘the
    action of the mind by which it is conscious of its own operations, attentive consideration, thought resulting from contemplation.’ This latter definition is what we are trying to achieve here and can be summed up in those two words, ‘attentive consideration.’ So, bearing in mind that our mental mirror may not be seeing things exactly as others see them, let us examine the ‘thoughts resulting from our contemplation.’
    Someone asked me a very pertinent question the other day: ‘In your lodge I know that you spend some time admitting and initiating candidates, but once they are admitted, what do they actually do?’ If we reflect on that question for a moment and give it ‘attentive consideration’ we are bound to admit that it is not easy to suggest an answer. In fact, in many cases there is no answer. The newly-admitted member watches other candidates being admitted and eventually takes part in the ceremonies of admission, but that is all – or so it would appear to the outsider.
    So it would appear because the outsider cannot believe that so many men can turn up year after year to see the same ritual delivered each time. The outsider, of course, sees only the reflected image and, as with all reflected images, he sees it the wrong way round.
    Mirrors can come in many different forms. I suppose the earliest of all was just water: legend has it that a youth named Narcissus saw his own reflection in a pool and promptly fell in love with what he saw. Aesop tells how a dog with a bone in his mouth, seeing in the water another dog, decided to seize his bone as well, then opened his mouth – and lost everything! Next came mirrors in the form of polished metal; this would have been the sort that the Apostle Paul was describing when he says, ‘Now we see in a mirror dimly’, for the image seen in such a mirror would have been far from perfect.
    The invention of glass led to greatly improved reflection. Glass on its own will reflect, as we know from looking in shop windows, but a proper mirror needs a silver backing behind the glass and no one has improved on that. It is possible, however, to create unusual images by using glass that is not completely flat: a convex mirror will magnify while a concave one will minimise – and there are also those awful ‘distorting mirrors’ that one sees in amusement arcades. One of these will reflect your image as a squashed-up blob on long spindly legs while the next one shows you as an obese monster with no legs at all.
    So we discover that there is a great deal more to ‘reflection’ than we originally thought. It means making allowances for the faults in our own mental mirrors and trying – in the immortal words of our Brother Robbie Burns – ‘to see ourselves as others see us’; and he wisely adds that the ability to do that would ‘from many a blunder free us.’ It is no accident that philosophers all down the ages have advocated as a most important command, ‘Know Thyself’. Blunders in this life are all too frequently made by people whose reflective minds are really distorting mirrors, telling their owner that his opinions are right when it is all too obvious to everyone else that his opinions are sadly wrong!
    It is always easier to see faults in others than to see faults in ourselves. Let us, then, try to use our mental ‘reflections’ to consider both sides of every question, to avoid the arrogance of certainty which precludes the possibility of being mistaken. Only in this way can we succeed in giving ‘attentive consideration’ to every problem and reflect the Divine Truth which pervades the Universe.