I am about to go on a Zoom to learn a little bit about politics, and do I need to learn a lot – no comment please!! Last night I was also on a Zoom. I was blown away. A woman from Nigeria who resides in the UK gave us (I exaggerate not) a thousand nuggets of wisdom. One day when I finally grow up I will have 2% of her insights. Until then…
There are so many aspects I could pick up on but the one that is simply reverberating in my mind and spirit still some 24 hours later went something like this.
We all need a place / a land where we remember who we are.
I might be misquoting it slightly, but I understood the issue of place / land can also be expanded into a relational context. How easy to forget who I am. Paul hits how we see others – we now see who they are in new creation realities. But maybe when we quote Paul we should start with we see no-one according to the flesh (societal / parental / gender / class etc. categories) we should quote it with a mirror in hand.
I had a Zoom call with Roger Mitchell today and reflected on the quote. He responded with – and the opposite is true. We can find places / situations / contexts where we forget who we are.
Israel had three main feasts. Get yourself there if at all possible. The feasts were to remind Israel of who they were, where they had come from, what shaped them and where they were headed. (And of course I see the Synagogue routine as a major step back from that.) They had to visit a place / an appointed time when they remembered who they were. Three times a year was enough to keep them focused.
For some of us home might be that place. For some of us home might be the very place where we forget who we are.
Who are you? Identity, not defined by anything external. Shaped of course by the negatives as well as the positives we have experienced. But deeper than that. This is who I am.
Find the place, the context, get there as often as you need to in order to REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE.
Rosie, thank you. I was, and I am sure the others on the call were, deeply impacted.