Who am I?

The Spiritual Journey

“After being baptized by John in the river Jordan, Jesus went off alone into the wilderness, where he spent forty days asking himself the question what it meant to be Jesus.  During Lent, Christians are supposed to ask one way or another, what it means to be themselves.”

                                                            Frederick Buechner

            My friend, Palmer Bell, who is an ordained minister, likes to tell a story about one of his professors in seminary at Vanderbilt.  On the first day of class, the professor wrote one question on the chalkboard, “Who am I?” and asked the class to take an hour and write about it.  He then walked out of the classroom only to return several minutes later.  He said, “And don’t use any biographical material, like where you’re from, who your family is, etc.”  Then he left the class again.  After a few minutes, he returned and said, “And don’t give me any information about the various roles you play—brother, son, husband, mother.  I don’t want any of that.”  According to Palmer, he kept repeating this pattern until he had stripped away all the usual labels one would apply to describe oneself. 

            Buechner tells us that Jesus spent the forty days fasting and praying in the wilderness asking the same question.  Not only who am I, but what does it mean to be me.  For the rest of us, these are important spiritual questions to ponder.  Unless you have an identical twin, you are the only you, you are uniquely endowed and experienced.  What does it mean to be you?  What are your gifts, what is your true nature, what are your shortcomings, what are your deepest desires? 

            Wayne Muller adds several more questions in his book, How Then, Shall We Live?  “Am I spirit or flesh?  Am I sacred or secular?  Am I irrevocably shaped by the circumstances of my personal history, or am I still free to move and grow, to uncover a new and brighter path.”  For every spiritual practice, this is both a beginning point and a place of returning.  We will spiral back around to these profound questions many times.

             I urge you, if you have not undertaken a spiritual journey, to begin today.  And, if you have already begun the journey, to claim some wilderness time for yourself to contemplate who you are without the labels, and what Spirit is calling you to bring into the world.

                                                            Welcome to the path,

                                                            Jane