{"id":18376,"date":"2019-10-24T09:38:27","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T13:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18376"},"modified":"2019-10-24T09:38:27","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T13:38:27","slug":"true-self-and-false-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18376","title":{"rendered":"True Self and False Self"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Gender and Sexuality<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/true-self-and-false-self-2019-10-24\/\"><strong>True Self and False Self<\/strong><\/a><br>\n<strong>Thursday, October 24, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-BIye98Ryic\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p>For you who have loved Jesus\u2014perhaps with great passion and protectiveness\u2014do you recognize that any God worthy of the name <em>must <\/em>transcend creeds and denominations, time and place, nations and ethnicities, and all the vagaries of gender and sexual orientation, extending to the limits of all we can see, suffer, and enjoy? <em>You are not your gender, your nationality, your ethnicity, your skin color, or your social class. These are not the qualities of your True Self in God! &nbsp;<\/em>Why, oh why, do Christians allow temporary costumes, or what Thomas Merton called the \u201cfalse self,\u201d to pass for the substantial self, which is always \u201chidden with Christ in God\u201d (Colossians 3:3)? It seems that we really do not know our own Gospel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>You are a child of God, and always will be, even when you don\u2019t believe it. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>And so is everyone else! God created us all. We are all God\u2019s children.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now don\u2019t get me wrong. I\u2019m not saying that social identifiers don\u2019t make a difference for your life. Before we can see ourselves together as \u201cone\u201d we must be in relationship with and value the \u201cother.\u201d God loves and creates each one of us as a unique being with different gifts and challenges. One of my favorite poets, Rainer Maria Rilke (1875\u20131926), put it this way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>God speaks to each of us as he makes us,<br>\nthen walks with us silently out of the night.<br>\nThese are the words we dimly hear:<br>\nYou, sent out beyond your recall,<br>\ngo to the limits of your longing.<br>\nEmbody me.<br>\nFlare up like flame<br>\nand make big shadows I can move in.<br>\nLet everything happen to you: beauty and terror.<br>\nJust keep going. No feeling is final.<br>\nDon\u2019t let yourself lose me.<br>\nNearby is the country they call life.<br>\nYou will know it by its seriousness.<br>\nGive me your hand. [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think this poem beautifully expresses God\u2019s desire for us to live into<em> the fullness of our humanity and our identity<\/em>. If we stay small and \u201chide our light\u201d under a bushel basket, there is almost no place for God to move in, through, and with us for the sake of the world!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am struck by the gentle, yet practical, affirmation the Reverend Elizabeth Edman received from her mother on this lesson of knowing and being who you are. If only all children could be so fortunate! Edman shares this formative story:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>I was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1962. The world I grew up in was defined by rigid binaries: white\/black, capitalist\/communist, north\/south. Oh yeah, and male\/female. That one didn\u2019t work for this tomboy. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>When I was five, I had to drag my mother into the boy\u2019s section of the shoe store to look at sneakers. \u201cMama, c\u2019mere! Let me show you the ones I want!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>My family taught me, \u201cBe who you are, Elizabeth, even when other people give you guff.\u201d When I presented the shoes to the clerk, he said, \u201cThose are boys\u2019 shoes.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>My mother cut him off: \u201cYes, size four, please.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>My mother was a singer. Being who she was meant having the courage to witness God\u2019s presence in the sacred music she loved. You could see her put her whole trust in God, entering into this space between heaven and earth where her best voice, her best self, emerged.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Christianity is all about being who you are <\/em>[what I call your True Self in God\u2013RR]. <em>That\u2019s what Jesus was trying to tell us: Orient your whole being to the sacred, he insisted. Not because I\u2019m telling you to, not because it\u2019s what Scripture demands; do it because it\u2019s who you are. It\u2019s who God created you to be. God made us to be complex creatures, every one of us, for a reason. So if you want to honor God, here\u2019s the first step: Know who you are. Be who you are. Be the person God created you to be. Amen. <\/em>[2]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gender and Sexuality True Self and False Self Thursday, October 24, 2019 For you who have loved Jesus\u2014perhaps with great passion and protectiveness\u2014do you recognize that any God worthy of the name must transcend creeds and denominations, time and place, nations and ethnicities, and all the vagaries of gender and sexual orientation, extending to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18376"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18377,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18376\/revisions\/18377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}