Truth & Consequences: ruminations of ‘I’
In this so called ‘post-truth’ world I need at least one anchor, one standard against which to consider the ever changing tide of circumstance.
Last week when typing the title for my Medium essay, What is this God? A Corrective: ruminations of a retired priest, I had one of those “ah-hah” moments in which the “Spirit of truth” rattled my chains. “Debra, why are you identifying yourself as a retired priest? Do you not see that this keeps you attached to the past? Do you really want to live with the unintended consequence of killing the present?” Ouch!
So I paused and pondered the possibility that I was clinging to a completed chapter of life, a leg of my long and twisted journey that I love and lament leaving. Truth be told, my ministry as a parish priest is done. I choose to be here, now, present. The experience of my former ministry has endowed me with a treasure trove, but, identifying myself as “retired” keeps me hooked to the past and steals my present. So, here I am, a soul-full ‘I,’ welcoming unknowing and stumbling along.
In the course of engaging the “Spirit of truth” (as described by Jesus in the gospel of John — see below) I recalled another subtle way Western culture has conspired to hook me to the past.
Full disclosure. I have been married twice. I am not sure what the context was, but after being divorced the second time I was completing a form that required I check one box; “married, single or divorced.” Being unswervingly certain that I was not the residue of an unsuccessful marriage or two, I checked “single” and have done so ever since. A couple of decades later in the course of a background check required to become an Episcopal priest, the investigators found it suspicious that a single person had used several different names. I explained, “I was married. I was divorced. I was married. I was divorced. The single “I” that lived through that series of conditions remains the same “I.” Single.” Apparently that satisfied the FBI.
The assertion that I am single and no longer identify with my previous pastoral position is a whisper of the “Spirit of truth.” It is the subtle, no fine print breath that presides from my heart, breathing life into who I truly am regardless of particular situations or groups in which I participate. I believe this is the Spirit of truth, the Spirit that Jesus promises lives in every one of us, regardless of our ever shifting social, political or religious affiliations.
Of course that sets us toe to toe with the question, “What is truth?” The facts are, although I was twice married, I no longer am. Although I was the spiritual leader of a church, I no longer am. If truth is an honest portrayal of my present reality, then I simply am no longer attached to marital status or professional position and the ‘I’ that participated in all of that continues to be ‘I.’
Why does this matter? Because in this so called ‘post-truth’ world I need at least one anchor, one standard against which to consider the ever changing tide of circumstance. For me the orienting standard for living is the ‘Spirit of truth, ’ the unconditioned ‘I’ that abides in me and you and every one even when we have no awareness of its presence or choose to ignore it.
I have no idea if this ‘I,’ this unborn, undying Spirit of truth that inhabits every one of us is the purveyor of what the Episcopal priest and renowned theologian who has written scores of books on spirituality and culture, Matthew Fox, calls humanity’s “original blessing.” But, if we presume it is, the notion of original blessing helps to make sense of the grand Biblical Narrative that declares humankind is made in the image and likeness of God and, furthermore, that humankind is good, very good. If from the beginning we all are blessed and imbued with the Spirit of truth, then the simple (though not easy) task of our lifetime is to recognize, revere and reveal the Spirit of truth that is our ‘I’ and follow its whispers to stay our course, regardless of what categories or groups culture strives to cast us in.
Here I am, a soul-full ‘I’ unmoored from the past, and, as the sun peeks above the thin green horizon line I lean into unknowing. The next in this series of ruminations will be about, you guessed it, welcoming unknowing.
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John 14:15–21 Jesus said, ”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
