“Verily, verily I say unto you, unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
Recently, I had a most interesting conversation with a friend on the subject of pride and humility. I recognized that these attitudinal dispositions are very difficult to identify in oneself in any given moment….much easier to see in others. Perhaps retrospective reflection might help us more accurately peer into the dark and often deceitful caverns of our hearts.
The fact is, the proud often give themselves to self-convincing pretensions of humility. And one of the common (unfortunate perhaps) traits of humility is an absence of self – consciousness. Self-absorption itself is a pretty good indicator of (if not pride, then) the absence of humility. These facts don’t make the process of judging oneself very easy.
So often, it is our inter-personal relationships rather than introspection that best reflect to ourselves the true state of our hearts. Only our neighbors can help us see around our blindspots.
Paul’s ‘thorn in the flesh’ could well have been that ‘mote in the eye’ that Jesus pointed out obscures our clarity of vision and balanced perspective. Matthew 7:3-5
Whatever it takes to keep us humble, I guess. Great power must be tempered…or we get the kinds of results currently experienced in our nations.
But we groan for so much more than we have grown for.
What we are definitely keenly aware of in the moment is paradigmatic shift…..whether being highly exalted or summarily brought low. We sense the falling feeling quite acutely, the deflation of disgrace, and too, the limelight of being suddenly celebrated, That can sometimes mek ‘wi head swell so big it cant fit troo di door’.
It is the ‘falling to the ground’ and dying bit that seems so unfair to us, and so unrelated to our dreams of growth and productivity. Yet all those dreams are hinged to identity shifts. The seed must become a sapling and the sapling a tree. Always, it is one’s identity that must change first, before one’s reality follows suit.
Who am I?
After yet another bawl out to heaven for men to take their ‘rightful’ place in society, my reflection is on the men amongst us that we have not properly celebrated….and those that we presently do, but unworthily so….and why?
What aspect of our identity matrix blinds us from seeing life as it truly is…..from seeing through the pure eyes of the Father of all spirits and not from the tainted presumption of our confounded belief systems?
Who was Ian Boyne?
I put it to you that although we may be accustomed to knowing each other ‘after the flesh’, that often gives us no clue to the essence Paul called the ‘inner man’ or ‘hidden man of the heart’.
That’s one of the reasons I love a good funeral, for when we toss away the encumbering carcass, memory is forced to re-evaluate with more unfiltered precision, just who it was that once walked.
If each visible persona is in truth being informed by invisible voices whose conversation constitutes the character of that person, as psychologists claim; then it is equally true that each invisible person (i.e. from the ‘spirit’ world of ancestors and angels, divinities and devils) is being informed by the voices of the visible….the tone of our present and past conversations establishing their existence in the world of spirit/thought.
The problem with knowing people ‘after the flesh’ is being stuck in a belief system that instead of enlightening and establishing true value, often occludes and even denigrates it. It’s the fruit of our character that establishes our identity….in this world and the next.
Who was Ian, really? What was his message? Hear again his story and answer the question “Who was it who walked among us?” whether we recognized him or not.
Hear the testimony of:-
What a man!
The man described here will never again walk among us …… as Ian Boyne. That man is no more. But will the fruit (his attitudes to children, women, work, nationhood) remain…… and even multiply……… called by whatever new names?
So who are we?….strutting the earth still with confidence? Are we justified only by our self-serving belief systems….or does the weight of our words and works also justify our claims of being?
Father God, You are always walking in our midst wearing some random suit of flesh. Give us the grace both to recognize you….and to reflect you, without regard to skin, flesh, bones or the confounded false categorization of religious and political ideologues more in touch with their heads than hearts. Amen.
YeKengalé 