A couple of weeks ago, I was scrolling through my WhatsApp text threads and saw, not for the first time, the text threads that “Winnie Petersen left” at some point after her death. As if my deceased mom could be the subject of an active verb like “to leave.” I guess that is what she did, in some ways. She left. But it’s a bit eerie to think of her leaving text threads after she left this life.

I tapped into our one-on-one texts to read through them (again, not for the first time), starting with the note I sent her after she died. The note she’ll never read: “Mommy… I miss you. My heart hurts so much not to be able to talk to you.” Scrolling up, there was the last picture I sent her: a hobbit hole themed cupcake my oldest and I had made. And then all the little texts: an update on her pain level, a picture of a card she received, encouraging words about a zoom sermon of mine she’d just listened to.

And then, on September 15, 2020 – a month and a half before her death – she sent me a YouTube link to a song: Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel. I clicked and listened (and you might want to click and listen while you read). The tears began to fall. For the first time in several months, I found my tears for my mom.

Arvo Pärt (b. 1935) is a prolific Estonian composer of contemporary classical music. Spiegel im Spiegel was composed for piano and violin in 1978, the year after I was born. The violin’s long and slow melody reaches low and high – each note pulling like an impossibly long breath. Beneath, the piano moves in constant quarter note triads like a gentle metronome. A heartbeat keeping time.

Pärt’s musical, political, religious and spiritual history are all worth reading about. I did not know any of it until I took a dive into his story this week. The Soviet ban on his early works, his creative crisis within which his biographer said, “he lacked the musical faith and willpower to write even a single note,” and his conversion from Lutheranism to Orthodox Christianity are all part of the pivot point of his story in the late 60s and early 70s. Out of that musical dark night of the soul a new method of composing and style of music emerged (of which Speigel im Speigel is an example): Tintinnabuli.

Arvo Pärt has said very little to explain his clear and simple music, which aims for unity. The fewer the words, the larger the space to interpret the music. “All is one” and “one and one makes one” are two of the most typical descriptions. The first sums up his world-view generally, and the second describes the unity of the polarities of tintinnabuli.[1]

In February of 2000, an album came out that included two variations of Für Alina (an earlier example of tintinnabuli) and three variations of Spiegel im Spiegel. This album was one of several CDs that were whipped about in the back seat of the car that my first husband was driving in December of that same year, when Layton was involved in the accident that claimed his life. We played this CD on repeat over the speakers at Zaagman Memorial Chapel, as friends and family filed through to see his body, cry, hug me. His breaths and heartbeat had stopped; mine moved impossibly on.

Spiegel im Spiegel resurfaced for us in the summer of 2019, when my sister’s mother-in-law, Dolores Keizer, died. Our family friends, Rachel Kroll and Erika Hoogeveen, took to the piano and the violin and played the song at her funeral. A year and a bit later, Rachel and Erika played it for us as we entered the sanctuary of my mom’s funeral (you can listen/watch at the 12:30 mark of the recorded service).

Spiegel im Spiegel – German for “Mirrors in the mirror.” An infinity of mirror images repeating themselves. Have you stood in the space between the reflections and tried to peer all the way into and through? Have you wondered what you might find if you could jump through all the repeats to the other side?

Sometimes we think of those who have died and losses that we have experienced as receding images in a rearview mirror. But what if the reflections of the past and the present mirror each other in an infinity of opportunities to love and to contemplate and to receive? What if one and one makes one?

What if one minus one is one?

This past Sunday, I spent some time with a resident who is dying in the long term care home where I am a pastor. Our previous visits had been filled with conversation, where he told me stories of his horse from when he was a boy, and spoke of his longing to sit on the grass in a forest, look up at the trees, smell the blue bells, and unwrap a sandwich from brown paper, sharing a bite or two with a friendly chipmunk. “If you’re good to people, they’ll be good to you,” he said. “And that goes for animals, too.” Spiegel im Spiegel.

On Sunday, when I visited, there was no more chatting. He was sleeping quietly. Classical music played in the background. I touched his shoulder, told him I was there, and sat down. I looked out at the bare trees, swaying in the late winter wind, and watched the clouds move quickly across the sky. I matched my breathing to his breathing, closed my eyes in prayer and perhaps a moment of sleep. Spiegel im Spiegel.

After half an hour, I stood up and placed my hand on his forehead. “I’m going now,” I said. “The Lord bless you and keep you,” I whispered. “The Lord make his face to shine upon you…” And in that very moment, the first triad of Spiegel im Spiegel began to play.

Surprised by sadness and joy, I basked in the blessing of the One whom we now see as a dark reflection in a mirror. The One whom we will one day see von Angesicht zu Angesicht… face to face.

[1] https://estonianworld.com/culture/sounds-emanating-love-story-arvo-part/

Sky Mirror header photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash

Arvo Pärt photo by Kaupo Kikkas

Mirror in Mirror photo by Patrick von der Wehd on Unsplash