Who Am I? Let me ask a mirror!

   Can you state your name and date of birth, please? How many times is this question asked in a modern American hospital on a daily basis? A hundred times? Not close. Easily many thousand times, considering it is required before any medicine or medical procedure is offered. Just the other day I heard one patient exclaim they were most exciting about being discharged to go home in order, "so I don't have to tell people my name and birth-date all day long."
   The truth is, more than just in hospitals, check-out lines, or the airport, the world is regularly asking us to verify our identity. Who are you? Where do you call home? What do you stand for? But, do any of us know the truest answers to these questions on our own?

   Saint Clare of Assisi, who lived in Europe as a Franciscan Sister from 1194-1253, wrote frequently about living in the world but not becoming of the world. Like us, she knew that we must spend time with God, apart from the busyness of the world, in order to stay grounded in our true identity. Of all of the ways of describing the best practice for living this out, she found the mirror to be the most helpful illustration for what. She would advise others to place themselves in front of the mirror, to let the light mirror you, and to look upon the mirror of perfect love each day.
   It sounds like a Disney fairy tale, but we are not able, on our own, to see clearly about ourselves. We are always wavering between being too kind or too harsh with ourselves. Instead, we really do "find ourselves through one another eyes," as Richard Rohr put it.
   We cannot do life apart from the company of others and apart from the the true, clarifying light of Jesus Christ shining into the world. Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. Therefore, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light" (Matthew 6:22). It is all a matter of learning how to see who we truly are and it takes much of our life to accomplish it.
   Pray for God to lead you into deep relationships where the truth can be told in love. Pray to God to speak to you in moments of silence, that you might hear of your own Belovedness. Pray about joining one on one discipleship, and allow the Word of God to work in your life as a mirror.
   Grace and peace, Scott