Who are you? Part 1

Who are you? I mean - strip away the pretense you have so carefully constructed and wrapped yourself in. Take away the titles, director, coordinator, manager, staff, client, employed, unemployed, whatever -- young, old, male, female, married, singled, divorced, abled, disabled– strip away your social/political identity, your psychological/emotional identity – remove what you project to others, or hope to project . Once all the labels and identifying markers that you or others have so carefully constructed are gone, at the very naked soul of it – who are you? You, the alone, inner – deepest part of you? Who are you left with – Nothing? Something? Uncertainty? Despair? Desperation? – Peace? Hope?

That question, of who we are in our inward parts, is one that most of us wish to either run from – or at moments desperately seek to discover – who am I? The most common response to that level of exposure is fear. It is like a brilliant light being turned on when you believe that you have safety and protection of darkness and anonymity. Have you ever had the thought? ‘If they only knew – me – what really goes on in this heart of mine, in this mind?’ What if they saw my weakness, my fears – those things said and done ‘in the dark?’ – I think it confronts us with our greatest fears of – being alone, abandoned – believing that we are unlovable.

Henri Nouwen stated the most basic of human questions are these.

“Is there anybody who loves me?

Is there anybody who really cares?

Is there anybody who wants to stay home for me?

Is there anybody who wants to be with me when I am not in control?

When I feel like crying, is there anybody who can hold me and give a sense of belonging?

Nouwen was a conundrum. He was a Catholic Priest and Harvard Scholar –a highly successful and sought after theologian, writer and Spiritual guide. Yet he openly struggled with deep cycles of depression and insecurities – with loneliness he deeply long for intimacy. Much of Nouwen’s writings revolved around this inner struggle of identification and meaning of self. He kept a secret journal for a very dark year and in it he writes “that was a time of extreme anguish, during which I wondered whether I would be able to hold on to my life…” I had come face to face with my own nothingness,…I could see nothing but in front of me but a bottomless abyss”.

He writes revealingly in a poem called “Work around Your Abyss”

There is a deep hole in your being,

Like an abyss.

You never succeed in filling that hole,

Because your needs are inexhaustible.

You have to work around it,

So gradually the abyss closes

Since the hole is so enormous,

And your anguish so deep,

You will always be tempted to flee from it.

There are two extremes to avoid:

Being completely absorbed in your pain

And being so distracted by so many things

that you stay far away

from the wound you want to heal.

I want us to leave those questions here for a moment, but keep them in the back of our mind. In the next blog, I want us turn our attention to a scene over 2,000 years ago, that I think speaks to the core of our being. In this scene I hope to uncover some answers to these deeply plaguing questions.

Neil