Who am I?

I am not I

“The GardenFest of Lights” at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. Could this be the way John the Baptist perceived the wilderness?

After a dear friend read my post, “Things fall apart,” she sent me one of her mother’s favorite poems, “Into the Darkest Hour,” by Madeleine L’Engle. Last Wednesday, after centering and settling in together with prayer, we began our Zoom gathering with this beautiful piece:

Into the Darkest Hour 

It was a time like this,
war and tumult of war,
a horror in the air.
Hungry yawned the abyss –
and yet there came the star
and the child most wonderfully there.

It was a time like this
of fear and lust for power,
license and greed and blight –
and yet the Prince of bliss
came into the darkest hour
in quiet and silent light.

And in a time like this
how celebrate His birth
when all things fall apart?
Ah! Wonderful it is,
with no room on the earth
the stable is our heart.


Madeleine L'Engle

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We then pondered the Gospel lesson that will be read in many churches on the Third Sunday of Advent. It’s called “Gaudete Sunday,” and it’s the day when the rose candle is lit in the Advent wreath. “Gaudete” is a word from the traditional psalm sung on this day; it means “rejoice.”

We looked at a portion of the Gospel lesson for the Third Sunday of Advent, depicting religious authorities insistingly asking John the Baptist, “Who are you?!” John repeatedly responds by saying who he is not. We wondered, “Is John the Baptist in touch with something about his identity that is so deep and true that it is difficult to name or speak about?” Here’s the passage we briefly pondered:

John 1:19-23

This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said.

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So, who are you? This is a question that spiritual masters have encouraged us to ask ourselves, perhaps anticipating an ever-deepening understanding of one’s true Self, an identity that many begin to sense is united with others. The sense of separation begins to fall away. The Desert Monastics preserved a saying about this:

“If you want to find rest here below, and hereafter,
in all circumstances say,
‘Who am I?’
and do not judge anyone.”

Sayings of the Desert Fathers

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As a prelude to our time of prayer in Lectio Divina, we engaged in a brief exercise that Ken Wilber calls, “The Witness Exercise.” Wilber writes:

[Begin with deep breaths, stillness…] “Then, slowly begin to silently recite the following to yourself, trying to realize as vividly as possible the import of each statement:

"I have a body, but I am not my body.  I can see and feel my body, and what can be seen and felt is not the true Seer. My body may be tired or excited, sick or healthy, heavy or light, but that has nothing to do with my inward I. I have a body, but I am not my body.

"I have desires, but I am not my desires. I can know my desires, and what can be known is not the true Knower. Desires come and go, floating through my awareness, but they do not affect my inward I. I have desires, but I am not desires.

"I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I can feel and sense my emotions, and what can be felt and sensed is not the true Feeler. Emotions pass through me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have emotions, but I am not emotions.

"I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts. I can know and intuit my thoughts, and what can be known is not the true Knower. Thoughts come to me and thoughts leave me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have thoughts but I am not my thoughts.

"This done – perhaps several times – one then affirms as concretely as possible: I am what remains, a pure center of awareness, an unmoved witness of all these thoughts, emotions, feelings, and desires.

"If you persist at such an exercise, the understanding contained in it will quicken and you might begin to notice fundamental changes in your sense of ‘self.’ For example, you might begin intuiting a deep, inward sense of freedom, lightness, release, stability.  This source, this ‘center of the cyclone,’ will retain its lucid stillness even amid the raging winds of anxiety and suffering that might swirl around its center."

The Witness Exercise: [No Boundary, 128-32, in The Essential Ken Wilber, pp. 36-7]

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In his book, Into the Silent Land, Martin Laird uses a metaphor to say much the same thing. He invites us to imagine a mountain that is surrounded by all kinds of weather. Some days, the weather is balmy and pleasant. Other days, it might be overcast and gloomy. And on still other days, it could be stormy, with violent winds, hail and lightning. Martin Laird says that the big mistake we make is to identify with the weather at any given time in our lives. Anger, depression, anxiety, or cheerful - these are states we can observe or notice in ourselves, but they are not who we are. The one who observes these states (emotions, thoughts, feelings) is free of these things. We are the mountain, not the weather that surrounds the mountain. This is a liberating realization.

So, when Jesus says, “Abide in me as I abide in you. … I am the vine, you are the branches,” he is speaking of a deep, abiding sense of union with God that can bring a whole new sense of who we are. As Wilber says about his Witness Exercise, if you practices it repeatedly, “you might begin intuiting a deep, inward sense of freedom, lightness, release, stability. This source, this ‘center of the cyclone,’ will retain its lucid stillness even amid the raging winds of anxiety and suffering that might swirl around its center.”

Or, as Laird says, “You are the mountain, not the weather that surrounds the mountain.” Settling into that realization, that “our true life is hidden with Christ in God,” that there is not separation between God and us, this is what Laird calls, “the Coperincan revolution of the soul.” Realizing our union with God, realizing that “God does not know how to be absent from you,” is the greatest revelation of all.

To allow this truth about “who we are” to settle more deeply, we used this passage for Lectio Divina:

John 15:4-5, 9, 11

Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

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How interesting that Jesus says he spoke these things to us “so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” The idea that joy (something more profound and abiding than fleeting “happiness”) is an essential part of our deepest identity is particularly helpful to ponder on Gaudete Sunday. Life, Joy, Peace all flowing like sap from the vine into every branch, though sometimes it seems that something blocks the free flowing of joy. Still, we are connected to, and one with, the Divine and each other.

We closed with a poetic reflection by Steve Garnaas-Holmes and one of my favorite poems by Juan Ramon Jimenez, “I am not I.” Garnaas-Holmes reminds us that in Advent, we are waiting for One who is already here. No one is separate from Christ; all are manifestations of the image and likeness, the very life of the Divine. Yet, Jimenez recognizes that he is not always attentive to his true Self:

Among you stands one whom you do not know, 
the one who is coming after me.
—John 1.26-27

The great paradox of Advent
is that we await the coming
of the One Who Is Among Us,
here already, profoundly present,
yet still coming, not done arriving.
Christ is not coming from a great distance,
inching closer to us from some far-off heaven,
but unfolding among us, within us.
We are pregnant with Christ, 
who is here and yet who is coming,
whose presence is full and yet blossoming.

Jesus, silently gestating in us, 
tender, innocent, dependent,
unknown, yet who loves us intimately
with infinite grace and wisdom. 
Wait, 
   and give thanks, 
        and wait.
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Steve Garnaas-Holmes 
Unfolding Light 
www.unfoldinglight.net

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I am not I

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
the one who remains silent while I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate, 
the one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
the one who will remain standing when I die.

by Juan Ramon Jimenez

Fresco of “Mary Great with Child” by Ben Long. St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in West Jefferson, NC