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.
How easy do we under estimate place attachment and it’s myriad meanings. A rich seam to research for me.
I have been grappling this question with 16/17 year olds this very week. Interestingly many if not all responses reflect that they are who they are due to external factors. They are all struggling with the question of identity. A fascinating discussion although I at times feel I do not have the skills to manage such a conversation. Hopefully I can bring some of this into next weeks exploration!!
I think we all grapple with this question… we the older experts who have it all sorted. I had a long talk with Roger M yesterday just teasing this out. And the challenge for the younger generation with the externals that push them into a preformed shape is simply enormous.
Of course, the First Nations Peoples have always known this. They believe that those who die are still attached to the land, hence the need to return things that belong the land like artifacts. That dictates the drive to return the bodies of children who died at residential schools, far from their land, back to their land. The land literally anchors us. Yet, modern society is built on mobility. Companies used to plan to move employees around every couple of years just to prevent them from getting attached to a place. It creates a deep level of emotional pathology within many. We detach in order to avoid emotional pain. That doesn’t mean you cannot ever move or relocate. Many of us have for many reasons. But it helps to work to attach to the new place. Invest in it. Take walks. Look around. Become attached and a part of things. Learn the place and know the place that you belong to. Identity arises out of attachment. Attachment means intimacy which comes from a shared history. Connecting back to the land helps create and sustain identity – something lost in a modern, consumer society.