October 19, 2005
True
In writing, I try not to stack the deck unduly but always to let doubt and darkness have their say along with faith and hope, not just because it is good apologetics — woe to the one who tries to make it look simple and easy — but because to do it any other way would be to be less than true to the elements of doubt and darkness that exist in myself no less than in others.
I can’t remember who said this, but when I saw it, it was obviously important enough to me to put in my journal where I found it copied there carelessly and without annotation. Mea culpa. But mea pleasure, as well.
For one of the more difficult things in life is to be true to oneself. Why am I who I am? Have I chosen that am-ness, has my environment and those who people it chosen me for me? Are we in this together? Is the me always we? How much freedom has entered into my choosing? Why do I judge, even condemn smugly, those who are not like me?
Our Judaeo-Christian tradition makes much of choosing, affirms, even, that the freedom to choose is what it means to be human, to be created in the image of God, to be a creature of God’s imagination. Makes me believe that when we imagine are we most Godlike, for we have the mind of Christ within us.
Maybe with God, it’s always rock and roll, always faith and hope and never doubt and darkness. Or else why would God have told Moses, “I am who I am”? But not so with God’s son who seemed never to be spared both doubt and darkness, yet could still say, “Before Abraham was, I am” and thus be true to himself enough to show us the Way.
[Visit Episcopal Relief and Development at http://www.er-d.org/ to make a donation to Katrina or Rita Relief or Episcopal Migration Ministries at emm@episcopalchurch.org to volunteer to assist displaced people with housing.]