Who am I?

Who am I?

Someone once remarked,                                                                                              

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

“Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.

There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are born to make manifest the Glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone, and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

That someone was Nelson Mandela: once a political prisoner, now a world leader and visionary, and throughout it all a child of God, just like you and me.

Easter is not some magic trick that happened in a cave two thousand years ago.

Easter is wherever you are dead inside, cut off, forgotten, abused—

and God raises you up,

God grafts you on to the tree of life,

God re-members you,

God restores you to the land of the living.

                       

Someone once described it this way:

“At first it wasn’t safe to express myself, and so I learned how to turn myself off.

Whether out of need or out of habit, it grew easier for me to just stay turned off.

Over time I became like a rusty spigot—to where I couldn’t open myself up, even when I wanted to, especially when I wanted to. That’s when I knew I had died inside.”

That someone was me: never a political prisoner, certainly not a world leader, but always a child of God, just like you and Nelson Mandela and every child.

I don’t believe in the power of the resurrection because I can explain it.

I can’t explain it. I can’t even describe it, really.

All I know is—and I know it as surely as I’m writing this—there’s life on the other side.

The preacher in me wants to go on sermonizing but I’ll save that for Sunday mornings.

At this moment, as in every moment, I’m a child of God and you are a child of God, and this alone makes each one of us worth saving.