Will the Real Me Please Stand Up

I ran twelve months and four time zones. Trying to out-run the turning of the Earth, the passing of time, the number of heart beats against the shield of my breastbone. I wanted to cheat time, cheat destiny, cheat myself of everything I was owed, raised for, deserved, feared. I wanted to escape from being me, wanted to feel me falling away like clothes, like jeans and jacket slipping to the cold wood floor, until I could stand bare and alive and just be… oh.

Right.

All the roles we play for others, for ourselves. As time passes and we grow (more complicated or) older, we tend to create more and more of these personas, these suits of armor, these veneers. Finally we have a wardrobe full of shades and variants of ourselves. None of them wholly us. None of them wholly not. A button from one shirt, a zipper from a boot, a pocket from favorite jeans -- little bits and pieces from each disguise is real, selected off that creature that is true. The real you, the real me.

The only us we really are.

An old friend said to me, “I realized I was agnostic when I was play-acting for God.” Meaning: When he prayed, he put on a persona.

I looked over at him, summer grass between us doing nothing to fill the hollow in his eyes, and said, “If He doesn’t exist than why would you hide from Him?”

Who am I?

I step into my closet and slide the slender straight-edge from my left boot. I work without speaking. Just the sound of thread and cloth slicing and coming free. A button from here. A sleeve there. A leather wristlet. A skirt. A pair of gloves, a silk scarf. I am taking the real pieces off all the costumes. I am taking back the real pieces and weaving them -- with spider webs, with moonlight, with the thin breads of your golden hair -- back into me.

When I wore a disguise, there was no chance anyone could hurt all of me. Only that one tiny part that I wore that day.

No more. Enough.

I want to wear myself when you look at me.

I want you to know me.

I don’t play-act for God.

Cast & Seek

How often have you asked Christ to illuminate a path or provide an answer to guide you? I've found I do this so often it becomes subconscious, a kind of quiet interior dialogue. And I don't mean the clear and panicked, "Christ, help me, guide me, walk with me." Or even the plea for help that sometimes can rise up from where we stand at rock bottom. I mean that voice in your head, in your heart, in somewhere deeper, that whispers and asks and answers, to. The small and serious, "Should I? Can I? What's the first step?" Or even sometimes, "Dear Christ, why did I?!"

I have never been a passive Christian. When I preach, I preach in the middle of the established hypocrisy, in the face of the street-corner barker, in the places where I am most likely to be ridiculed, misunderstood, and disputed. I have no interest in being a martyr; I just I want the challenge, I want the adversity, I want to feel the world pushing back; I like to move things, shake things, and yes, be shaken.

Because if you rock my world? It just proves the strength of my foundation.

And when I running away? I'm not passive there either. Not even when I'm hiding from my faith, from my spiritual responsibilities, from everything else under Christ's open sky. If I'm hiding? I hide actively. I make a real go of it. I don't just step behind a rock, I dig a hole, crawl into it, and drop the rock over my own head. I make my eyes so blind that I don't see angels even when they're trying to slap some sense into me.

And trust me, it takes one heck of a slap to get me out of my hole.

Being active, living an active life -- or maybe I should say, an Active Life -- has a feeling that lives in my bones and muscles and informs the way that interior voice speaks to me. Whether I'm running into the light, running with the light,or running away from the light, I thrum with the act of doing, choosing, being aware of and active in every choice-and-response.

So when I ask my questions, like we all ask of Christ, I'm not passive. I don't wait. I don't sit back. I don't seek-and-find. I cast.

Mark shares Christ saying, "I will make you fishers of men." Every great fisherman knows the importance of casting. Are you aggressive, are you in or against the wind, the current, the tide? Are you patient? Are you passive or are you active? I like to cast out my question with hard work as my bait. I don't want to cast an empty hook and expect Christ to flip my answer up on my deck, already cleaned, cooked, and seasoned.

I'm willing to fight for my answer even when I have to fight myself.

I cast my question and then seek to find my catch. I don't cast and sit back. Fishing for answers is not a relaxing, soothed by the waves experience for me. If I ask, if I cast, I want Christ to know I'm willing to wrestle and land any marlin He gives me.

Even if I have no idea what I'll do with an answer that big.

I only know I can't meet that type of size with passive faith. Passive faith never did anything for anyone except put butts in pews... and there are no pews in my active life.