“Sooner or later we must distinguish between what we are not and what we are. We must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be. We must cast off our false, exterior self like the cheap and showy garment that it is. We must find our real self, in all its elemental poverty, but also in its great and very simple dignity: created to be the child of God, and capable of loving with something of God’s own sincerity and his unselfishness.” – Thomas Merton
I have settled. This life is subversively arranged in a way to choke out authenticity in favor of something more safe. There is a weight to our souls we feel, but wish we didn’t. In this smoke and mirror space we live hiding behind selfies, religion, and plastic, there is a gentle voice longing for more. Soul work is violent. The book we learn from is filled with those who boasted in weakness. Today, we boast in weakness only to sell an image of brokenness or tell of a testimony completed. Yet our journey is circular and rarely linear. What makes us deceive people into thinking we are something we most assuredly are not? Would they not love us more if we shared a glance into our reality? Would they know how to react?
In ministry, this “real self” is frowned upon. If you lead within church walls, it is assumed your testimony is wrapped up in a quick ten minute soundbite. The fact is, this is not merely a lie, but anti-Gospel. There are no clean saints here, no matter who is holding the microphone, only limping civilians caught in a battle they were drafted into. It is often this tension, the tension between who I project and who I know me to be, that ends up ending careers, ministries, and families. It would be professional suicide for me to share my current struggles with the body and the bottle if I am to lead others who are just as steeped in this gentle numb of sin. For I too have traded what was learned on Sunday for the escape of a Saturday night. Trading in grace for the grave is all too comfortable of a negotiation.
And so we march on in the tallest of shadows, beggars of light. We know authenticity starts with us, but our comfort and insecurity reign us in from stepping across the threshold of self. So today we timidly ask for mercy as we project and dodge the arrows of our own ego and our perceptions of others. We crave for deeper, we crave for a grace found with a sin shared softly. I am not who I mean to be. Join the multitude of broken saints who long for transparency in the midst of personal wreckage. We cannot truly be free from burdens unspoken, but with whispers and stutters we declare our weakness. For today, this is a humble beginning.
Lord, have mercy on me, a shell of a sinner
Matt simon blog 