February 16, 2025 – B

Carl Jung said, "We are who we have always been,
and who we will be."

I practice "active imagination"
with conversations with Jesus and Buddha, and others
from time to time,
and recommend it to you and your own
meditative moments.

One of the things that "come through"
(From where, who knows) regularly, with Jesus
in particular,
is what a child of innocence and purity he was,
with no guile or inauthenticity about him,
and "Shocked, I tell you, shocked,"
at the disingenuousness of others.

He did not belong to this world
(Neither did the Buddha).

This comes through for me in Jesus' interview 
with Herod,
where he held back and did not step forth
in his own behalf, as I wish he had done,
but he couldn't.
It wasn't who he was at the time.

And I look back at my own life
and the times and places where that was so with me.

I wish my foundation had been then
as it is now,
but it took all 80 years and counting
for me to be here, now. 

There is no way I could have been then
who I am now.
But the Truth of me here, now,
was the Truth of me then, there,
I just did not have the chutzpah 
to "put myself out there"
(And good for me that I didn't,
in seminary, for example, saying,
"Theology is only a bucket of opinions
about hearsay!" I would have spent my life
selling shoes!)

But we are who we are always and forever,
and grow into being ourselves over time--if
we cooperate with ourselves and grow consciously into 
who we are to be, like an oak tree from an acorn.