I Believe

The other day, I was discussing with a friend the new the new clergy wear at a Tat Fayre. One item it appeared was made out of a material that would distract so heavily from the clergy collar, you probably would not have noticed it. The question then popped into my mind, why bother spending all that time and energy forming yourself into a new person, going through an ontological change to hide it?
Society today encourages us to find ourselves, provide for ourselves, indulge ourselves and generally look after our own interests first (even if we all like to pretend we aren't doing this, we do). So after agonising and twisting and turning along your long path you come to face the hard realities of life. A dawning discernment of who you might be, what you might believe in and what you might want to do with that information. A hilltop has been climbed and you stop at the top of the hill and say from here on in it is only down that is easy.
The you look over the edge and realise, actually it might be a bit steep, a bit slippy with all that gravel, you might just fall on the way down.
The problem being that having been told to find out who you are, when you get there you find that someone or something will always tell you that what you are is wrong. That how you have chosen to live your life will not be what is the right way to live. Most fundamentally people will always tell you that what you have chosen to be your faith, that basic building block on which you build your being is wrong. Someone, somewhere will try and rip that from under you, so you fall.
So back to the top of your hill looking down. The journey does not seem so easy now even with all the knowledge you have gained. Do you hide who you are to fit in or do you take what you have discerned in your life and use it?
As we head towards Lent, that point at which we are all challenged to look at our lives. We must discern in this time our faults and our failings, we must look at turning towards that cross on the hill and how we can change our sins and sufferings into a living ministry of Christ Incarnate. We can all use this time to put ourselves at the top of the hill and  look temptation in the face. The way down may look scary, it maybe treacherous, but the soul searching that lead to our standing before Christ in the first place is all the strength we need to reach the bottom. We just need to have a little bit of Faith, that together with our Lord and his teachings we can find our way down. But temptation to hide or to change the fundamentals of who we are both as individuals and the Church is there all the time.
Sometimes I feel the world around me is a bit like the story of Adam and Eve, they have bitten into the fount of modern knowledge and revelation without really having the all encompassing wisdom that goes with it. So there we are here biting into our apples seemingly naked in our response with our very much short sighted action that comes with the knowledge we have gained. Our actions are shallow and superficial and in many ways we remain blind to the effect that such progress has given us. All these wonderful promises that we can fix the world if we do this based on this, if equalise everyone to be the same, if change what being a family means, if we change our doctrine. The trouble is the world isn't being fixed. the only truth that can ultimately change the world is loving each other, loving each other in our differences not trying to make the world all the same. There is no point having an identity in the first place. If all you are going to do is hide it to please the world.
Each and every day societies actions become more God like, their assertions of truths more concrete all leading to a life lived in the promise of equality and fairness. However all we are getting is a discordant noise of argument and division and far from equality you get a widening chasm of inequality. We already have the truths of life, we are born, and we die. The only thing that will make the difference in the middle is faith, love and toleration. This is not the same as change, we need to love those from whose opinion, maybe even lives, faith and doctrine are vastly different from ours. We do not however need to change the teachings and doctrines that we have to fit in.  They are the foundations of our Church. They are what we or our parents promised to adhere to at Baptism, they are what we promised to adhere to at Confirmation and they are what we promise on a weekly basis to do every Sunday in the Creed. I believe, that makes me who I am and therefore who I should be  and how I should live.