Crooked Mailbox

A shimmery, silvery apparition that appeared on my wall could have been butterfly wings, an hourglass, a shiny Rorschach inkblot, a pair of kites or cat’s eyes, perhaps two flying saucers. It could have been a translucent abstract painting. It was composed of two lobes, each roundish-diamond shaped, about three feet long and two feet across, tilted leftward, perhaps (or not) connected in the middle by a shadowy fragment.

I saw it when I exited the closet. I halted abruptly and stared, intrigued. I had never seen that image in that room, or anywhere, really.

Whatever it was, it took an interesting route to get there. The October afternoon sun shone at an angle it has only that time of year, traveling down through a window high above the tub. It reflected off the metal cover plate for the tub’s cascade faucet and reached the wall opposite the window, above a towel rod.

When I approached the image, my angle of vision changed, and, thanks to another reflection of light, it duplicated in the mirror, enchanting me again.

Most days, that wall is blank and I give it hardly any notice, but this time here was something beautiful and surprising. In Wendell Berry’s poem, “The Wild Rose,”  he wrote of seeing a rose where “yesterday was only shade.” He celebrated the surprise floral appearance with this line: “and once more I am blessed, choosing again what I chose before.” A mere routine became special.

I was a runner for twenty-four years until my painful knees demanded I stop. I miss the adrenaline and athletic accomplishment, but I also miss little things I noticed on runs. I alternated running only 5 or so routes, so I mostly saw the same sights over and over. There was comfort in that familiarity, but I also sometimes saw something I hadn’t seen before, like the crooked mailbox on Dahlgreen Street that had always been straight. As I ran by, I wondered: Did someone angrily pummel it? Did someone accidentally hit it with their car? Did they offer to pay for its repair or hastily drive away?

Those unexpected moments delighted me, inconsequential as they were.

This creation of light and angle and metal and painted drywall—an unadorned wall I rarely had any reason to notice—delighted me as well. And I would have missed it if I hadn’t exited our closet at that precise time on that cloudless sunny day, the sun’s crisp rays, undiffused by clouds, creating a defined image. Everything that made this scene—our house, the window, the tub’s metal plate, the wall, the sky, the sun—had been in place for 27 years, but I had never seen this. Who knows how many times it had appeared, and on that day, I saw it.

The polished metal plate was contoured just irregularly enough to rearrange the light rays to make this delightful shape out of reflected light. It sent that light at an angle at which the reflection didn’t simply land on the wall. It spread across it, like the way a long, evening shadow makes someone look tall who isn’t. A commonplace bathroom fixture became a reflector-projector, creating an artistic image. Ordinary conditions generated an extraordinary vision.

In my practice as a spiritual director, I rarely give advice or try to offer an interpretation of someone’s spirituality. I count on the conversation to be revelatory on its own. I might ask a question or make an observation that leads to self-reflection. I count on God’s spirit to be present throughout the sessions, ready to nudge us toward some sort of enlightenment. Much of spiritual direction takes place between sessions, after all, when what we have talked about percolates, simmers—away from a time labeled “spiritual.” Ordinary time.

The next day was cloudy, so my visitor didn’t appear. That time of year, the sun’s angle toward the earth changes about 0.4º per day (per ChatGPT), so its presence will last only so long. Eventually the sun shining through the window will miss the metal cover altogether, and there will be no reflection at all. But I’ll never forget leaving the closet and looking up. It lingers.

Like my spiritual direction conversations, in which reflective moments happen unplanned, this apparition was made special by its unexpectedness. Like the crooked mailbox I saw on a run, this beautiful reflection on a plain beige wall stunned me with its ordinariness (sun rays reflect off shiny metal all the time all over the place—not specially for me). The Spirit, thankfully, can move us even if we’re not necessarily expecting it or asking for it.