Secretly just me

With my iPod on shuffle yesterday, I came across a line in a song from Over the Rhine that said, "more and more I'm secretly just me." That line along with thoughts inspired by the book I just finished--No Mercy--have been winding through my mind in a thread.

It occurs to me that in our search for significance, we take on more and more that is not ourselves. Mindy Cagulire of Soulcare said once that the opposite of simplicity isn't complexity, it is duplicity, and that we need to embrace where we end and where God and others begin. The thing about that is that all of our shoulds, ought to's, musts and add ons are frequently in our own self-interest.

David-the-Artist pastor spoke yesterday about his roles...as a father, son, husband...pastor, writer, teacher, artist.  He said most of the roles were functional, and that there would always be better writers, pastors, teachers, and artists than himself. But that the relational roles...father, son, husband...were the ones that only he could fill.

Our hearts--that part of us at the core of our being--is where all the important work happens. And the things that breathe life into it or lock it down are almost always related to relationship and not function. When we focus on the relational, it frees us to "secretly be ourselves" allowing the functional roles (writing, teaching, art...whatever your own personal variation is) to flow.

It isn't that we don't want to get better on the functional, but I'm becoming certain that we aren't supposed to put the focus there. The functional roles are about significance. The relational roles are about love.  We are only commanded to do one of those.