When the Mirror Fades
Male, Female, and the Disappearance of the Divine Image
Author’s Note
For the past month here on Substack, I’ve wandered through the sacred mystery of man and woman. Kings and queens. Strength and beauty. Each bearing the divine image in their union. This piece is the culmination of that pilgrimage: a meditation on the eternal Image we carry, together.
What does it mean to lose God’s reflection in ourselves? What is at stake when we forget the design beneath our being? This is an invitation to pause, breathe, and remember — because when male and female fade, so does the vision of Him.
“What does it mean to lose God’s reflection in ourselves? A meditation on the eternal Image we carry.”
The War on the Image: When Male and Female Are Erased, So Is God
Over the past few months, I’ve reflected on the sacred masculine and feminine — kings and queens, strength that protects, beauty that creates, woven into a holy dance older than time. These weren’t essays about fleeting controversies. They were meditations on what we’ve lost — the quiet mystery where two become one, reflecting the Source of all sources.
Yet a shadow lingered, unnamed until I returned to Genesis with a tired heart and open hands.
This is not about men and women alone. It is about the Image of God.
Martin Buber spoke of the “I-Thou” encounter, where the human face unveils the eternal, reflecting God’s presence. But today, faces seem untethered — eyes restless, bodies performed, as if we’ve become mirrors casting only echoes, blind to the original Light.
Once, a stranger’s glance carried a flicker of dignity, a trace of eternal origin. Now, we are shadows veiled in shadows, forgetting the source of our radiance.
Genesis declares that God created us male and female to bear His image — not as rigid roles, but as a sacred polarity, a living icon of His mystery. This isn’t a commentary on politics or culture wars, but a deeper loss — a forgetting of whose image we carry.
“In the ‘I-Thou’ encounter, we see God’s image; in mirrors casting echoes, we lose Him. Male and female are not roles but revelations.”
The Shattering of the Image
It didn’t happen all at once. These things rarely do.
The shattering of something sacred usually begins with a slow forgetting — not a violent explosion, but a quiet drift. We don't destroy the image of God by swinging hammers at heaven. We undo it the way a story is lost: by ceasing to tell it, by losing the thread.
And so it has gone with the image — the one given in Eden. Male and female, He created them. Two flames from one fire. Two names for one breath. In that original pattern, something holy pulsed: strength and softness, structure and flow, will and wisdom. Not stereotypes, but symphony.
But over time, we traded the pattern for power. Then we traded power for performance. And now, we’ve begun trading performance for disappearance.
What we’re living in today isn’t just cultural confusion — it’s spiritual fragmentation. A crisis not just of gender, but of form itself.
Boundaries have become suspect. Definitions are called violence. Identity is no longer received; it must be constructed, curated, and constantly updated.
And through it all, something ancient is cracking.
The Jewish mystics spoke of Shevirat ha-Kelim — vessels too fragile to hold God’s radiant light, scattering divine sparks across a broken cosmos. So too, the soul’s vessel, shaped as male and female, fractures when we forget its divine purpose.
Charles Taylor calls our age “disenchanted,” but the deeper loss is the self — untethered from the sacred forms meant to reveal God.
“Like shattered vessels, the soul’s sacred forms — male and female — fracture when we forget their purpose: to reflect God.”
The Deep Consequence: Losing God in the Mirror
Last month, sitting in a crowded coffee shop, I saw people staring into their phones as if waiting to be found — searching for a reflection that might tell them who they are, and coming up empty. We once looked in mirrors to find ourselves; now we edit or escape the reflection, reducing temples to costumes. From bearing God’s image, we’ve turned to managing it — crafting a brand where a mystery once dwelled.
The tragedy is that this hides God from our eyes.
The Zohar mourns, “Woe to those who see the body only as flesh,” for every soul conceals a divine mystery. Julian of Norwich saw this too: our being is “knit to God” in creation, yet we unravel that thread by reducing ourselves to biology or constructs.
When we no longer know what we are, we cannot see who He is.
“When we reduce the soul to flesh, we unravel God’s image and lose Him in our reflection.”
Yet the ache persists — a longing in our anxiety, our silent shame, our search for something real. Many feel it but cannot name it, scrolling endlessly for a presence no algorithm can restore. The wound is not external; it is the absence of the divine in our reflection.
And maybe, for some, the ache goes even deeper.
“But what if I don’t feel like I bear anything sacred at all?”
I’ve felt that, too. Most of us have.
The point isn’t to perform the image — it’s to remember it. To uncover it. To trust that even under shame or doubt, the divine imprint hasn’t been erased. Only veiled.
In ancient iconography, to be an image-bearer meant to be a living window — a thin place between heaven and earth. The face, the body, the voice were temples, not pointing to themselves but revealing Another.
That was our original dignity: not autonomy, but transparency to the divine.
When this design is blurred, the world loses its windows, and God becomes harder to see — not because He has withdrawn, but because we’ve covered the glass with our own designs.
The Invitation: Restoring the Icon
The work ahead isn’t to win a culture war. It’s to return — to remember the image in which we were made, and live as if it still matters.
Beyond the clamor of arguments, hashtags, and anger lies a quiet place where the soul recalls Eden — where man and woman were revelations of God, not tools or threats.
As Maximus the Confessor taught, to live as an icon is to be transparent to the divine — allowing God’s light to shine through us together.
This isn’t a solitary task. The image is restored in relationship—when male and female honor what is sacred in one another—not as roles to defend or blur, but as mysteries to receive with reverence.
Each bears something the other cannot. And when we forget that, something of God goes unseen.
We remember through quiet acts: in how we speak with gentleness, listen without defense, create space for what we do not fully understand. Sometimes it looks like holding a child. Sometimes it sounds like truth spoken kindly. Often, it begins in the body — honoring it as a temple, and seeing the same in the other.
This is how the image is carried back into the world. Not through force. But through love.
The word icon comes from the Greek eikon — the same word used in Genesis and Colossians to describe both humanity and Christ.
It doesn’t mean celebrity or idol. It means window.
Ask not, “Who do I want to be?” but “Whose light do we bear?”
The memory of Eden lingers in our breath, our longing, the ache that persists despite our curated selves. That ache is a summons to recover the presence behind the form, to inhabit the sacred polarity of male and female with reverence — not as battlegrounds, but as vessels of revelation.
“To live as an icon is to be a window for God’s light, restored not alone but together.”
Reflective Return: A Circle Back to the Beginning
I began with an ache — a sense that God is fading from our mirrors, not because He hides, but because we’ve turned the glass inward.
Kierkegaard called this the “sickness unto death” — a despair in forgetting our God-given self, the image of male and female reflecting Him.
This isn’t just my weariness — it’s a loss of spiritual visibility everywhere, a blindness born of turning from the sacred design.
Scripture declares we are made to reflect God’s image. If that image fades, we risk blindness to Him — not because He’s vanished, but because we’ve fogged the mirror with our own breath.
This is our work: to live as truer voices, men and women who make God visible by remembering who we are.
“The sickness of our age is forgetting God’s image in us. Our work is to live as truer voices, making Him visible.”
The image doesn’t preserve itself. It’s carried and tended by those willing to live within the mystery—even when it’s costly and defies the moment’s narrative.
We don’t need louder voices, but truer ones — men and women who know what they carry and help the world remember who God is.
This matters more than we know.
This is what the world needs now — not louder rulers, but true image-bearers.
Kings who protect. Queens who create.
And a people who remember what it means to reflect the God who made them.
Practices of Remembrance: Restoring the Image in Daily Life
Restoring the image of God begins in quiet, deliberate acts — a contemplative path to embody the divine mystery. These are not rules, but invitations to live as image-bearers.
1. Honor Your Body
Treat your body not as a project to fix or a problem to solve, but as a place where God chose to dwell.
This doesn’t mean perfection — it means reverence.
- Walk without headphones once a week.
- Eat a meal slowly and without multitasking.
- Bless your body — not for how it looks, but for what it allows you to do.
“Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” – 1 Corinthians 6:19
2. Notice the Image in Others
Learn to look for the image of God in people — especially those you’re tempted to dismiss, envy, compete with, or reduce to a label.
- When someone frustrates you, ask: “What part of the image might they be bearing that I’m struggling to see?”
- Tell someone, honestly, what you see in them that reflects something holy.
Remembrance begins in how we see.
3. Recover Sacred Language
Speak of yourself and others in terms of essence, not utility or achievement.
Let your words push back against the tide of branding and performance.
- Say to someone — or to yourself — “You are made in the image of God.”
- Begin your prayers with “Father” or “Maker.” Remind your soul who named you.
“You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.” – Isaiah 43:4
4. Make Time for Stillness
The image of God is often drowned out by noise, distraction, and speed.
Stillness reopens the space where presence can be remembered.
- Set aside ten minutes a day for silence — no agenda, no screens, just presence.
- Light a candle once a week and sit with no task but to be.
Restoration begins in slowness.
5. Live the Polarity with Reverence
Don’t erase the difference between masculine and feminine — and don’t weaponize it.
Instead, live the tension with humility. Let it teach you.
Reflect on what God is forming in you — strength, nurture, truth-telling, beauty.
Bless the opposite in someone else.
The world needs polarity that creates, not polarity that divides.
You don’t need a platform to bear the image - You need presence.
You don’t need to be loud - You need to be faithful.
Let the world forget - You remember.
And in remembering, help the world see God again.
“Restoring God’s image begins in quiet acts — honoring the body, seeing the divine in others, living with reverence.”
Have a great day. Stay sharp, pray, and be ready to embrace your divine journey!
Ty
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📖 About the Author
Ty Nichols, M.Div., is a writer, educator, and spiritual guide who serves as the principal of a high school, where he mentors students at the crossroads of identity, faith, and formation. With a deep love for Scripture and sacred tradition, Ty’s work draws from the wellsprings of Jewish and Christian wisdom, mysticism, and cultural discernment. He is the author of Jesus Is Jewish, a work exploring the Messiah's Hebraic roots and the continuity between covenants. Whether in the classroom or on the page, Ty carries a longing to help others remember what is sacred, reclaim what has been lost, and walk with dignity in the image of God. His writing is not just theological—it’s pastoral, poetic, and prophetic.
What a clear and thoughtful set of reflections, starting from Buber's I-Thou relationship and exploring the presence which dwells in the interspace. That brings into focus Meister Eckhardt's reference to God as inhabiting the place between things. Silence becomes the quietness allowing well expressed words from the heart to be spoken, and heard. And the blank page, the open field in which contradictions can be transformed into complementarities. This silence without form is the original ether, never empty, endlessly giving rise to all forms and all polarities. I think you are guiding people back to this most ancient of places, and reminding them that the act of forgetting is the tragicomic act of losing face, having exchanged the mirror which the complementary other provides for the solipsistic and narcissistic iterations of the selfie. You speak with gentle invitations to reflect, not with admonishment, and this itself brings the possibility of healing.