Book reviews
“Of making many books there is no end. . . “Ecclesiastes 12:12 NRSV
Face in the Mirror
by J. t. Collins
Reviewed by Dee Ann Miller
F ace in the Mirror isn’t just a book about a lesbian woman coming out. It’s about her inward spiritual journey, discovering herself while looking into the “glass darkly.”
Personally, I was mesmerized with Collin’s account, more so having known her as a child while serving in the same Southern Baptist Mission alongside her dear parents in Malawi. My suspicions had long ago been confirmed about the reasons for “my niece” withdrawing for a considerable time to find a place of emotional safety. Yet reading her first-person account was like finding a lost letter from the past. It was great to have some of the blanks filled in—not just about what occurred since the time I last saw her, going off to college. Most insightful were the revelations of painful, confusing events in her childhood, even before we’d met.
This book isn’t only for gay and lesbians or those who love them. It’s for anyone who has ever struggled personally with a system that does not welcome new information and quickly demonizes those who come as whistleblowers, challenging the status quo. It’s for those who have broken out of old belief systems, whether staying or leaving such a system.
While the author doesn’t reference I Corinthians 13:12, I thought of that verse constantly while making my way eagerly to the end. As a believer in progressive revelation, I have long understood all of that verse to apply to our life before death. If we dare to peer into the mirror with a desire to see ourselves and others more clearly, the glass will become less and less “darkly.”
That peering, at best, is a collective viewing. When we look together into the same mirror, what we see in others becomes clearer as we stand beside the person we may have previously seen as “the identified problem.” How cruel it is, especially as a child, to be left alone in this arduous task, as J. T. and many other gay and lesbian individuals have been! Yet Collins gives us hope by showing that, even in virtual isolation, it’s possible to gain insight.
In time, especially as we are able to find others to mutually self-disclose, that mirror seems to shine itself. And that’s exactly what J. T. Collins has demonstrated for all of us. She has come full circle back into the arms of a host of people in the community of faith who have had the courage to look anew at who she is and what she represents.
Obviously, her story is far from finished. Now reconnected, I personally look forward to seeing it further unfold as she continues to polish that mirror before a great cloud of witnesses. What a gift to each of us if we only have the courage to join her in seeking truth!
Dee Ann Miller is a writer, first published in 1970 in Home Life Magazine. Since 1993, she’s specialized in collusion with gender-based violence and abuse in the faith community. (see www.takecourage.org) Currently, she and her husband Ron, a retired American Baptist minister, are seeking input for a new project from male pastors who have addressed gender-based violence from the pulpit.
