Friday, July 29, 2011

Creepy


Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”



Sometimes people admire me even though they don’t know anything about me. This always creeps me out. The person they admire is of course someone entirely different from me and in fact someone entirely different from anyone who actually exists. On days when I’m in a gracious mood I can chalk this up as a vocational hazard. On the days when I’m feeling especially unlike the imaginary spiritual action figure in question, patience comes less easily. The latter kind of days have been more common recently so I've been finding myself eager to drop an F-bomb or pick up a cigar or lay down some smack, just to etch an exclamation mark behind what I’d really like to say: Foo. Dat. Idol.

Several Greek Church Fathers, a few scholastic monks and a handful of retro-hip modern theologians all say that you and I are like the Trinity in at least one very important way: We have our ‘being in relation.’ By that I think they mean that we don’t first exist all cozy and complete and then go around making incidental relationships. No, they say, that would be backward. Instead, our lives are meant to be something closer to the other way round: We find, discover and receive our identities from others in the throes of our relationships with them. Identity is not the nugget inside, the island, the ‘substance’ beneath it all. Identity is the gift our friends and family inject into our spiritual bloodstream by acknowledging us as the person we are becoming. This is  true of whatever weekly jousts we might have with the gas-station attendant and of however we might know the Father through the Son by the Spirit.

In other words, I’m not me unless everyone who knows me keeps knowing me as the person we are collectively creating.

But let’s bring this back from brink of deep-thought gibberish: We are whoever the people we love allow us to be.

And yah, that’s loaded. What if we’re lousy at love? I’ve heard that’s common. Or what if the people we manage to love are occasionally grabby, selfish dinks? Also common, I’ve heard. Or, now back to the point, what if some of the people in our lives ‘know’ us as someone we really aren’t?

I’ve been a dad for twelve years now. And each of those twelve years is filled with twelve months of four weeks where most days I respect my own parents more. They were the first to acknowledge me as the person I am becoming today, and somewhere in those early years I was given a sense that I don’t need to pretend to be anyone else. I have no idea how that worked except that it likely had something to do with courage and trust and their uncanny ability to allow me to make my own mistakes.

It would be a mistake to accept my identity from people who don’t really know me.

And it’s no mistake that ‘know’ can be a euphemism for love.

Those who do know/love me know that although I might have a weakness for cigars, I don’t ‘lay down smack,’ can’t cuss without sounding dumb and am nowhere near as impressive as the idealized mirage of a spiritual hero that some people want me to be. On my good days I’m okay disappointing the confused caravan of some people. They’ll have to get over it. It would be good for them to get over it. On the more common days, the days when there are more mirage seekers than grace givers, I can almost hear my soul crack in the baking sun of false admiration. Ack. Blech. Gasp.

On those days it’s up to the frazzled shards of my childhood faith to creep and crawl back from the pounding hooves. Let the caravan pass. 

And let me find again the soothing shade of God’s Grandeur.


5 comments:

  1. So many streams of thought came out of reading this. Good one.

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  2. Dave: Thanks for commenting. Glad it made some connections for you - and hope those streams have rising trout in them.

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  3. I love what you've got to say here and your expression of the communal development of the self. In ministry I too struggle between the who I really am and who people think I should be, but possibly in a slightly different fashion than what your expressing here.

    I am actually quite consistent in who I am regardless of the setting I find myself in or the people I find myself with. I don't try to be someone I'm not, and this is what people actually find off-putting. Consistently there is a contingent of people who believe "the pastor" should be a warm, gregarious, socializing extrovert. I am not this though. The people who know and love me know I am warm and caring, but I am relatively contemplative and introverted. I have been shaped and allowed to be me through those who love me, but am often pressured to be something other than that by those who don't know me as well. I don't easily give into their expectations of this mirage pastor would be though and it causes friction.

    How would you read or properly deal with a situation like that given your understanding of personal formation in community (as influenced by old greeks and neo-hipsters)? '-)

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  4. Ben, thanks for your comment - and for checking this out.

    I think Jesus may have been an introvert. If he was, he probably still is. He put up with crowds well enough but wasn't what we'd i.d. as the charismatic pastoral leader type. He was often awkward at parties and seemed to get his energy from time alone or within small groups.

    People want a mirage (aka idol etc) but part of your job is to not give 'em what they want in that regard. Tricky business for sure.

    The other trick is for you and I both to keep pressing-on toward transformation and newness. Labels like 'introvert' and 'extrovert' can become excuses for spiritual laziness - words we use to avoid the discomfort that growth involves.

    There will always be a rub between the person we are allowed to be by those who really know us and the person those who don't know us think/wish/demand us to be. Thank God then for those who give us the freedom to be and become who he wants.

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  5. I feel as if you have touched base on the dreaded word "Stereotyping". Based on what you have said everyone in the world could be placed in a Stereotype. For example if I was to mention the first 3 things that came to mind about a specific "Stereotype" it would be as follows: Police - Donuts, pistols and Law enforcer. Doctor - Medicine, Health and a person you typically don't want to see. Carpenter - Nail, wood and saw.
    What I'm trying to say is that all of these people can still be who they want to be, stereotype aside. Being that you're a man of God, I don't see you on Monday walking the streets with bible in hand and if you did I wouldn't think much of it. I occasionally hear you drop an f-bomb and you are right, they sound outta place and a bit awkward only because I think of you as someone that shouldn't say things like that "just kidding".
    I often find myself answering fishing questions when I'm not at work, on my personal time and I have come to understand it as a way people communicate with each other because I am known as that fishing guy. At work, I ask people that have a heavy accent where they are from not that I care but it is an ice breaker "conversation piece". It has almost become a habit, to the point that I have asked the same person that very question and they have called me on it "which gets a little embarrassing".
    Paul just be happy that your not a Super Hero because I could see those tights becoming a bit uncomfortable. Although you are a man of god, you have chose this path and if you don't like it there are always forks in the road and another "Stereotype" is born! We live in a time that nothing is surprising, not even a Bear riding a bike. Your style of preaching is fresh, keep it this way, people will find this alone different.

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