Skip to main content

The Identity Question

Occasionally I have reason to go back over some things that I have written.  That can be a fun, rewarding experience.  Certainly not everything I have written is worth preserving.  Sometimes what we write is for the moment.  Clearly this would be the case with many papers we write when we took classes in school.  Many of us have jobs in which we have to write stuff for a specific moment.             

Computers make saving stuff much easier.  With computers we can create folders, organize all sorts of things and now store things “in the cloud,” whatever that means!  I think it means whatever I write and store in the cloud will live longer than I do.  Maybe that is a new version of life after death!           

Obviously I have lived long enough to remember the days before computers.  I recall the time when having an IBM electric typewriter was about as good as it got!  Those came equipped with the built-in means to backspace and erase a mistake.  That meant we could throw out the “white out” bottles!  However, I can be a bit wistful when I think of the white out liquid.  Magically it would make my mistakes go away.  And if I were careful and not use too much, it was very difficult to see where I had used it.          

My writing life goes even further back to the manual typewriter.  I don’t even tell my students that any more, because they don’t really care.  Besides, they can’t understand a guy who uses an iPhone talking about manual typewriters!  It simply does not compute!  I think I began using the manual typewriter sometime in my high school years.  I know I took a typing class in high school.  I still appreciate that skill set.           

Amazingly enough, I can even recall writing those theme papers for school, when the teacher insisted it be written in ink and written legibly and neatly.  Boy that was real pressure! To write in ink meant no errors.   

But through it all, it was still my own mind creating ideas that were committed to “paper.”  From the handwritten papers to the “papers” generated on my laptop, the unchanging facet has been me.  Of course, that does not mean I have not changed.  My mind has grown, developed, and expanded in phenomenal ways.  In some ways I am not at all that young guy writing papers with ink pins.  But in other ways I am still the same guy today composing thoughts on my laptop. 

While this might be interesting to some, one can wonder what does it have to do with spirituality and the spiritual journey?  As I narrated my journey as a writer, it has been a personal narration.  I have made that journey and still am on the way.  One might say the journey’s trail is the host of things I have written.  They represent me…but they are not me. 

To use poor English, I can pose the deep question: who is me?  I suspect most of us answering this personal question would settle on external and superficial aspects of who we are.  We can think of age or body type.  We cite vocation, interests, etc.  These are aspects of our identity.  But they are not truly who we are.  Identity goes deeper. 

Much of my writing seeks to be soulful.  Obviously that presupposes I have a soul or, as I might prefer, am a soul.  I do suppose that to be true.  Knowing there can be different definitions of soul, let me simply say I understand soul to be the essence of who I am. 

This means if I can tell you about my soul, then I am telling you at the deepest level who I am.  I realize that I have become quite spiritual at this point.  I cannot possibly tell you anything about my soul without telling you also about my soulful Parent---the creator God who “made” me in the beginning and blew the very Spirit of God into my soul.  At that very moment I became a living being.  “Me” was created and all the potentiality of my mind was activated. 

At some point, the actualization of my mind developed to the point where I had words and could conjure up ideas.  I became as creative as my Creator.  I knew I had words to share, just as much as God had a Word to share.  My words went onto paper and, then, into some people.  God’s Word went directly into people.  Receive my word and receive me. 

Communication becomes communion.  Understood well, communion is nothing short of miraculous.  Communion is “union with.”  It is a uniting---a union.  For Christians it is the three in one---the trinity.  Ultimately, it is the all in one.  At that point there will be no need for words.  The silence will go so deep into the Sacred, there will be nothing to say---no need for Amen.   

Then there will be no identity question.  Perhaps in the union of communion there is not even identity for all shall be One.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I-Thou Relationships

Those of us who have read theology or, perhaps, those who are people of faith and are old enough might well recognize this title as a reminder of the late Jewish philosopher and theologian, Martin Buber.   I remember reading Buber’s book, I and Thou , when I was in college in the 1960s.   It was already a famous book by then.   I am not sure I fully understood it, but that would not be the last time I read it.   It has been a while since I looked at the book.             Buber came up in a conversation with a friend who asked if I had seen the recent article by David Brooks?   I had not seen it, but when I was told about it, I knew I would quickly locate and read that piece.   I very much like what Brooks decides to write about and what he contributes to societal conversation.   I wish more people read him and took him seriously.             Brooks’ article focused on the 2016 contentious election.   He provocatively suggests, “Read Buber, Not the Polls!”   I think Brooks puts
1 comment
Read more

Spiritual Commitment

I was reading along in a very nice little book and hit these lines about commitment.   The author, Mitch Albom, uses the voice of one of the main characters of his nonfiction book about faith to reflect on commitment.   The voice belongs to Albom’s old rabbi of the Jewish synagogue where he went until his college days.   The old rabbi, Albert Lewis, says “the word ‘commitment’ has lost its meaning.”    The rabbi continues in a way that surely would have many people saying, “Amen!”   About commitment he says, “I’m old enough when it used to be a positive.   A committed person was someone to be admired.   He was loyal and steady.   Now a commitment is something you avoid.   You don’t want to tie yourself down.”   I also think I am old enough to know that commitment was usually a positive word.   I can think of a range of situations in which commitment would have been seen to be positive.   For example, growing up was full of sports for me.   Commitment would have been presupposed t
6 comments
Read more

Inward Journey and Outward Pilgrimage

There are so many different ways to think about the spiritual life.   And of course, in our country there are so many different variations of religious experiences.   There are liberals and conservatives.   There are fundamentalists and Pentecostals.   Besides the dizzying variety of Christian traditions, there are many different non-Christian traditions.   There are the major traditions, such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on.   There are the slightly more obscure traditions, such as Sikhism, Jainism, etc.   And then there are more fringe groups and, even, pseudo-religions.   There are defining doctrines and religious practices.   Some of these are specific to a particular tradition or a few traditions, such as the koan , which is used in Zen Buddhism for example.   Other defining doctrines or practices are common across the religious board.   Something like meditation would be a good example.   Christians meditate; Buddhists meditate.   And other groups practice this spiri
3 comments
Read more