It is said that “home is where the heart is.” Wouldn’t you agree? Is not home a place, or rather ‘state of being,’ where love and acceptance, rest and safety, and care and hope all take residence? Granted we all think about the concept of home differently, but don’t our ideas all boil down to a sense of wholeness and completeness where the heart is full, where love is embodied?
Years ago, I fell in love with Parker Palmer’s book, “Let Your Life Speak,” and in particular his idea of what he calls a person’s ‘true self.’ We so often think we have to force an identity on ourselves, to make ourselves something more, something greater, something magnanimous and perfect. There’s this modern acronym that has circled the social media sphere for a decade or more now that alludes to this fear of not becoming the person we feel we should be, of not being or having enough. The acronym is FOMO, the ‘fear of missing out.’ Oh, it’s often used in the same context as ‘keeping up with the Joneses,’ alluding to a fear of being left behind if we don’t ‘fill in the blank,’ but it also points to a bigger fixation that we have as a society that somehow, in some way, we, as individuals, are not enough. We need something else, something more to become who we are supposed to be.
But Palmer takes exception to this idea. Life is not the pursuit ‘making oneself,’ but is discovering our true self. Our true selves are who we were/are before we were born when we were with God, and who we will be/are with God when this life is over.
Parker writes, “This is what the poet knows and what every wisdom tradition teaches: there is a great gulf between the way my ego wants to identify me, with its protective masks and self-serving fictions, and my true self” (Palmer, pg. 83 Kindle ed.). Distinguishing between ego and true self is difficult. “It takes time and hard experience to sense the difference between the two – to sense that running beneath the surface of the experience I call my life, there is a deeper and truer life waiting to be acknowledged” (Parker, pg. 84).
Our identity is not something we make or achieve; it is a gift we have received. We are notincomplete, in need of pursuing countless things to make our lives whole, but we are already made whole, needing only to acknowledge the ‘treasure of our true self’ that we already possess.
What if discipleship is not a matter of becoming something or someone else, but about listening to our lives and embodying our true self? What if it is not about a new, foreign way of life, but a ‘coming home’ to the familiar?
For me, this subtle shift in view transformed how I considered being the Church. It may not sound like much, but, for me, it was freedom. I remember countless sleepless nights following seminary classes, dialogue with clergy colleagues, and even interviews with my committee on ministry. The pastor they said I should be was not me. I questioned, time and again, should I continue this pursuit? Should I go down this trail if, in the end, I have to embrace this particular image and force this identity on myself? I did not fit the mold.
It was a conversation with a seminary professor that gave me hope. I preached a sermon in the chapel for my preaching class. It was a great sermon. My professor gave me an A+ in fact. But I had one professor come up to me in the receiving line following worship who invited me to see him that afternoon in his office. When I got there and he had closed the door behind me he said, Adam, that was good sermon today, well thought out, well written, the delivery was good, the exegesis was top notch, but…it wasn’t you.
He went on to tell me that over the last three years he had gotten to know me: my personality, my passions, my hopes, my motivations and sense of call. And then he said the most freeing thing I have ever heard, “Adam, you need to be yourself. God is not calling you to put on a facade when you serve as Minister of Word and Sacrament, God is calling you to be you. And I am excited for the future of the Church because of people like you entering into pastoral ministry. We have needed you. So when you preach, be you. When you offer care, when you lead Session, when you serve others, when you pray, be you.”
And then he gave me a copy of Parker Palmer’s book, “Let Your Life Speak.”
So, my friends, I encourage you to be YOU. Let your discipleship become about a ‘‘coming home’ to the fullness of life. The light of the world in Jesus Christ shines into the darkness and reveals our true selves.
With Grace & Peace,
Adam
