Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 3, 2020
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Finding Self
As we continue to experience life in the midst of a pandemic, we reflect on honesty, reality, and finding our true selves.
Is there such a thing as being too honest or too real? Is it possible to strive for integrity in such a way that we deceive ourselves into believing that we have the only perspective worth holding? Is it true that reality constructs for “itself a world in its own image and likeness” as Martin Heidegger writes in Being and Time?
When reality begins to reflect on itself rather than the world as it is it becomes bent in or bent over like a mirror on a fun-house wall. By moving ourselves around we can look pleasing thin when we are not. We can stare at an image of ourselves which means nothing in that it arrives at our eye through distortion . . . and it does not match what the rest of the world sees. This is what can happen when we bend in too close to protect ourselves from the outside world; we have no perspective, we lose touch with our surroundings, and eventually we even lose contact with how the rest of the world perceives us. In some cases we find that something ugly inhabits us, taking over and corrupting what is meant to be a sacred self.
Reality turned back on itself becomes too narrow, intensely hermetic and stunting. Reality shared with others blooms, flourishes, and gives life. Honesty brutalized goes inward and decays. Honesty nurtured sustains and revives.
We all have a choice to decide how we wish to live. We can surround ourselves with mirrors that we position to reflect what we want to see . . . or we can emerge from this carefully constructed world of deceit to step into the light. We must be willing to save our lives by losing them. We must forfeit our self-importance to gain our possibilities. We must deny our false conceptions of self in order to reveal who we truly are . . . followers of Christ. This is what the apostles learn in Matthew 16 and it is something we might to think about today: in following Christ with integrity . . . we discard the conceits and falsehoods . . . and we find our true selves.
To browse through Heidegger’s BEING AND TIME, go to: http://www.harpercollins.com/browseinside/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061575594
Image from: http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/iP_GLtGbob8/Anish+Kapoor+Uses+Wax+Canon+Create+Latest/EDIjjrjDxD5
First written on September 15, 2009. Re-written and posted today.
The Noontimes 