There is a Celtic blessing of rain wishing upon us the gentle rains that soften the furrows, loosen the ground, nourish the flowers, and the great rains that beat down, cleansing the earth and leaving puddles that reflect the blue of sky and sometimes a star. I love that last image, coming upon an unexpected mirror, looking down and seeing the wonder of the sky.

This mirror opens us to the world beyond us. This reflection takes us from looking down to the greatness of the universe.

Not all mirrors do this.

The bedroom mirror lets us check that we have put together the look we want before we leave the house. The bathroom mirror lets us examine closely what is right or wrong with our face, our body. These mirrors are supposed to give us a chance to see what we look like.

A glance in these mirrors lets us catch hair that's out of place, the breakfast stain on our shirt. Sometimes we will be surprised by a grey hair, a discoloured splotch of skin. These mirrors reflect for us what others see.

But these mirrors only show us the surface, not the attitudes that shaped our look, the values that determine the impression we seek to make. Others will see the outside, but also our mood, the emotions that reign or rage in us, the way our mind works.

Art can act like a mirror that helps us see our inside, the spirit that is embodied in us, the social values and habits that shape us. Paintings reveal more that the body. Poetry and music mirror for us the ideas that shape the way we see ourselves, the way others see us. Stories descibe more than what people do, helping us to catch sight of the influences on our lives.

Film and television mirror our society. Some show the cost of our attitudes, the people who suffer from our practices, those whe benefit and those who are left out. These may accurately reflect the world as it is but in a way that helps us see what is wrong in the image, at least from one perspective.

These works of art--with image, action, words and music--are not a flat mirror. Their reflection highlights particular places in the image, certain gifts or flaws.

Listening to Spark on CBC radio, I was reminded that social media is like the mirror in our house. Because of the algorithms that select what comes up in our news feed, social media sites show us values and ideas much like our own. Only things like what we have "liked" will appear.

Last winter, when the young people from Florida brought their message about gun control to Washington, I saw lots of posts supporting them. Great discussions of the need to control automatic assault rifles crossed my view. Clearly, public opinion had been swayed.

Except, I knew things hadn't shifted that much. I went on line and searched for anti-gun control memes. And there they were. Lots of them. As strongly expressing that opinion as those I saw every day.

At that moment I realized what the Spark program was telling us: the way it is structured, social media provides a mirror not a forum for discussion. To bring change, opposite views need to encounter one another. All social media does, as it works now, is reflect what we already think.

Walking down the street, we pass a darkened shop and see our relfection in the window. We also catch sight of what is behind us and across the street. This mirror opens us to more than just ourselves.

Commercials sometimes pull a person into a mirror, taking them out of ordinary life into something they dream of. Fantasy stories use mirrors as bridges to another world. In life, mirrors are used in mircoscopes to show us things smaller than we can see with our own eyes. Mirrors are used in telescopes to show us things farther away than the human eye alone can see.

Mirrors can show us what is here and what is beyond. It is our choice what kind of mirror we seek to use. We can look for those unexpected puddles which show us , not our face, but the blue of sky and sometimes a star.

Cathy Hird is a writer living near Walters Falls.