Becoming Yourself

Now I become myself.

It’s taken time, many years and places.

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people’s faces…”

-May Sarton

What a long time it can take to become the person one has always been!  How often in the process we mask ourselves in faces that are not our own.  How much dissolving and shaking of ego we must endure before we discover our deep identity- the true self within every human being that is the seed of authentic vocation.  Vocation is not so much as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received.  The beautiful scriptures proclaimed in these church seasons of Lent and Easter really invite us to deeply reflect and ponder our vocation.  Vocation does not come from a voice “out there” calling us to become something we are not.  It comes from a voice “in here” calling us to be the person we were born to be- to fulfill the original selfhood given us at birth by God.
 

I think of Anna and our baby to be born later this summer as regards vocation.  Babies do not show up as raw material to be shaped into whatever image the world might want to make him or her.  They arrive with their own gifted form, with the shape of their own sacred soul.  Biblical faith calls it the image of God in which we are all created.  But we quickly are led to believe that we need to put on masks to find who we are. 

 

What “masks” have you worn in your life?  Even the roles of being a spouse, parent, pastor, grandparent, etc. in a sense “mask” who we are.  As the poet May Sarton reminds us, it does take time, many years and places to become ourselves.  We arrive in this world with birthright gifts and then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disavow us of them.  As we grow, we are surrounded by expectations, images of acceptability, and social pressures.  Then, and only by chance, if we are awake or aware, we spend the second half of our lives trying to recover and reclaim the gift we once possessed. 

 

When we lose track of true self, one way we can seek clues to pick up the trail of our true self is to really listen, read and allow the readings from scripture to touch us.  It is there where we are reminded of our truest self.  We were made in God’s image and likeness.  The stories of Resurrection we will hear April 16th and through the Easter Season will be a wonderful trail of clues for us to discover and re-discover who we are.  You see the deepest vocational question is not “What ought I to do with my life”  It is the more elemental and demanding “Who am I?  What is my nature?”
 

Spend the rest of these Lenten weeks and Easter season lifting off those masks you have put on through the years.  Rediscover who you are.  We are Christ-bearers, imprinted with the seal of the Holy Spirit at baptism.  The task is clear: go become what you are!
 
~PJ

^