Who are you?
Alice, it seems, is not done with us yet…… or else the Spirit is manifesting as the Caterpillar and persistently, annoyingly blowing her frankincense-scented smoke rings at us to hold us in this space of self-discovery a little longer.
Who are you?
Whilst reading in Revelation, thinking about Jesus, and reflecting on our Lenten series, it has occurred to me that “who we are” is often complicated by the fact that we hold our identity across past, present, and future.
A part of our identity is invariably rooted in the past: where we grew up, family/ies of origin, and past experiences of faith and love and travel and work and life. Here are found the origins of many of our deepest held beliefs as well as those greatest traumas — both of which will impact both present and future for good or ill.
Another part of our identity is located in the present: our day-to-day life, how we describe ourself (which may be more about the past — or future — than the present), current relationships, and so on. This part of our identity is often squeezed between past and future, despite being the place where the richest life is lived.
Then there is the part of our identity that lives in the future: our hopes and dreams, the “us” we want to be, our world made right. In a sense, our values live in the future because it is only in the future that our values may be fulfilled.
If you were to assign percentages to each of these parts of your identity, how would you rate yourself? Would it be something like 60% past, 10% present, 30% future? Or maybe closer to 20% past, 30% present, 50% future? I’m pretty sure none of us would be 33 1/3% across the board, nor am I certain that is the mark to aim for.
But I am also quite confident most of us would recognize something unbalanced about the way our identity is presently organized with respect to time. Most of us have met someone who was 80%+ in one time, and we can see in them how unhealthy it is. Perhaps by struggling to put a number to ourselves, we can see the speck in our own eye a little more clearly.
I am convinced that much of our struggle to follow Jesus is in learning how to live in the present moment with Jesus. But I also recognize that Jesus did not live 100% in the present; his identity involved both past and future, and he knew how to balance those against a “majority present” in ways that are healthy and helpful in living an abundant and fulfilling life. By learning from him, I believe we can too.
Remember, we’re all in this together.
Peace+
Pastor Michael