I was doing a little "inventory" on my blog and came across this post on a piece by Brother Patrick from All Saints Day last year. Here's a snip of BP's reflection:The attempt to fill the chasm of who I am with anything, even anything good - books read or published, good works accomplished, income donated, degrees earned - is itself an indication of just how alienated from myself I have in fact become. The measure of that for me is when I find myself in the company of different groups of people: around my students I could feel confident in my knowledge base, while among my classmates I feel somehow more ephemeral, like I am less real around people who know more than I. That may be one way of reading "the Fall" in Genesis 3: the immediacy of my knowledge of my relationship and identity with God gets disrupted with the rise of self-consciousness, of shame and pride, so I feel the need to cover my nakedness with the fig leaves of what I can pat myself on the back for.
...I am no Mother Teresa, which is ok - I'm not called to be her, but to be me, genuinely me, which is harder than it sounds. This mimesis or creation of desires based on other people tells me what I am supposed to desire, what I am supposed to want to be, and it will jerk me around as long as I play the game of trying to produce a mask that is so real that I will forget that it is simply a mask.
And there's more - but you'll need to link over to BP's place for the rest of his All Saints Day reflection.
Image by Ricky Romain: click on the image for a larger version
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oh, thank you for this-
ReplyDeleteI think it goes well with your homily- about how many of us don't like ourselves...
being "me"- figuring out who "me" is-
IS harder than it sounds- (although, to me, I think it also sounds hard)
I still tell myself, often, "who I am is who I am in God and nothing more"- it is what I say to comfort myself, to get through difficult moments, to keep myself going...
Thank you for this link! I've been working on peeling away the layers of shoulds and the critical voices to reside more fully in the real self which God made me to be. Your wonderful homily this weekend spoke to me here and so does this reflection.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for the reminder about our singing the Litany of the Saints this morning. What a gift. Thank you again and again.
Have a beautiful day,
Meighan
I also saw a conectino between my homily and Brother Pat's post - all the more interesting since he was writing on All Saints Day and I was preaching for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time.
ReplyDeleteThis one is a very hard one for me to read as I sometimes think that is what I do most of the time, but I don't find it easy to write succinctly about it. I noticed today that Ron Rolheiser has written an article dated 31.10.10 which addresses something similar :here is the link : http://www.ronrolheiser.com/
ReplyDeleteThe title of the article is Subtle Forms of Idolatry !!
Blessings