I have come to believe that we are all mirrors of one another, especially when we encounter the troubling, frightening, negative people and things and stories and events that are so much a part of life.

It could be a callous politician, an angry neighbor, an ugly storm, a traffic accident, a burst of violence, a wrenching shooting of innocent people, a vicious Tweet or  e-mail, a Tsunami in Asia, an earthquake in Tibet.

Or some more bad news.

We look for who to blame, who to cheer, who to pity, who to punish.

We experience troubling things as random occurrences, or as one minister put it, “shreds from the patchwork fabric of modern life that we were unlucky enough to witness” or learn about.

The mystics writing in their caves thousands of years ago had a different idea, one that has stuck in my mind for years, I first read of it in the writings of St. Augustine, and then again, in the Kabbalah.

These mystical thinkers believed that nothing we ever see is a coincidence, everything, especially something troubling and frightening – has a reason an a purpose and a message for us.

On the spiritual level, they taught, everything we see is a mirror in which we are reflected ourselves.  An angry message says something about my own anger and rage.  An earthquake or accident speaks to me of the fragile nature of all of our lives.

Killings of innocent people and the trials of the needy challenge me to pay more attention to my spiritual work, to continue on my path towards rebirth and renewal and transformation.

Albert Einstein once wrote that “God does not play dice with the universe.”  Everything that happens needs to happen, what I see in the outer world is a reflection of what I need to see inside of me.