Mirrors go both ways. Their meaning is ambiguous. This porcelain one can represent vanity or it can encourage you to see the divine within yourself. Independently, two little girls looked at this new piece and asked, “Does this mean that when you look in the mirror you see God?” The idea of “god within” is not exclusive to Christianity, thankfully, for it is a beautiful and a healing concept for all
to experience. Translated from the Latin, imago Dei means “image of God”. The term is used frequently in discussions on spirituality as shorthand for our being created in the image and likeness of God. To quote Heather Murray Elkins, “to be an imago Dei woman is to be: created in goodness, injured by sin, transformed by grace, destined for joy in God.”

This type of make-up mirror is called a “vanity”. The three sections remind me of a medieval triptych or three-paneled altarpiece. The center panel turns around into a magnifying mirror (actually a platinum overglaze). The contemporary theologian Marcus Borg says “Jesus is the side of God turned toward us”. The image of Jesus is copied from an icon from Mt. Sinai, one which has a particularly powerful presence. This Christ is tender and humane, yet at the same time otherworldly. His eyes are different--one is wide and has a compassionate, earthy expression, the other is more reserved and transcendent.

On the back of the two wing panels are carvings adapted from medieval ivory plaques featuring Mary Magdalene, who I figure would be one Biblical woman who would probably enjoy a vanity mirror. Whether or not Mary Magdalene was the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with costly perfume, she is usually represented in art by a small ointment jar. On the one here is an adaptation of Blake’s Wise and Foolish Virgins, from the parable about the bridesmaids and their oil lamps. Mary Beth Rogers’s book, Barbara Jordan: American Hero quotes Ms. Jordan on the topic of imago Dei: “If we are made in the image of God, what is the source of our love of money? What is the source of our love for power? Profit? Wherein does greed and avarice and bitterness lie if you are made in the image of God?...We are very complex beings and we seem to be bifurcated between an outer self and an inner
self...” She describes the “whole” person as one who has managed to merge her inner and outer beings. Looking within is essential to wholeness; that is obvious and it is ancient.

Some scriptures that refer to these ideas include:
Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2, 9:6, 33:10 Numbers 6:25, Psalm 27:8, Isaiah 68:19
,
2 Corinthians 4:4-6, Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:3, James 1:23, Matthew 25: 1-13.

Imago Dei is Latin for “image of God” — the audacious claim in Genesis 1:27 that human beings are made in God’s own image. Not God’s photograph, exactly. More like God’s signature on the work. Theologians have argued for centuries about what this means: reason? creativity? the capacity for relationship? dominion over creation? All of the above, none of the above. What it cannot mean, most agree, is that God has a nose. The trouble with mirrors is that they only show you the surface. Imago Dei insists there is something underneath that the mirror cannot reach — which is either very reassuring or very inconvenient, depending on the morning.

Recently the acronym DEI got requisitioned for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — programs designed to extend opportunity across lines of race, gender, disability, and background. Then, in early 2025, executive orders from the Trump administration began dismantling DEI initiatives across federal agencies, universities, and corporations, with a speed that suggested the image of God in certain faces had become, officially, a bureaucratic inconvenience.