You Are More

Most of us live lives of self-impersonation. - Thomas Merton 

The above quote by the late Christian mystic and philosopher Thomas Merton was nestled in the middle of a paragraph in a book I happened to be reading today, and it seemed to stand out on the page as it if were emboldened and in all caps.  

I believe that far too many of us are living diminished lives.  When we do dream, we dream too small.  And we spend most of our days bending our heads to the six-inch screens we hold in our hand, bending our minds to the false reality those screens create.  

Further, the images we offer up as evidence of our "realness"  (the photos we obsessively post on social media, the way we conspicuously consume, etc. ) only serve to perpetuate an illusion we secretly know can't be sustained.  

Songwriter Ryan O'Neal writes of the quiet desperation that we feel in the midst of that struggle: 

I know the further I goThe harder I try, only keeps my eyes closedAnd somehow I’ve fallen in loveWith this middle ground at the cost of my soul

If you have been wrestling with feeling that you have been selling yourself short... 
If you have grown tired of living with the aching feeling that what you've been presenting to the world is an impersonation of your true self...  
If you are starting to feel like there has to be something more...  

Take heart.  There is more.  You are loved and beloved.  You are more than enough.  And you are larger and stronger and more alive than you know.  Author Adele Ahlberg Calhoun puts it like this: 

No matter what baggage or messiness you carry, Jesus looks on you with love and undivided attention.  He sees your goodness--that completely original facet of the divine image that you alone bear.  And he can't take his eyes off of you. 

May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.