We’re talking for the next few weeks about the question of identity.

Identity is one of the three core spiritual issues:  identity, purpose, and meaning.

I remember the three spiritual issues by remembering three questions.  Who am I?  What should I do?  And why does it matter?  Identity.  Purpose.  And Meaning.  Who am I?  What should I do?  And why does it matter?

We’re looking at identity this month and next, because it’s a core spiritual issue.  And also, because identity is one of the Five Developmental Tasks that UUA asks congregations to work on during an interim period between settled ministers, such as this congregation is in now.

The spiritual issue of identity has two dimensions:  personal identity and corporate identity.  Who am I, personally?  What does it mean to be me?  What are my gifts?  What are my challenges?  What is the particular contribution that I can make to the co-creation of reality?  What do I need to do, for myself, so that I can fully express the “me” I was meant to be into the world?

The spiritual issue of identity also has a corporate dimension.  What does it mean to be us, all together?  What is the identity of this congregation, for instance?  And even more general spiritual questions like “What does it mean to be human?”  How are human beings the same and different from other animals?  Is there some part of human nature that is immortal, perhaps?  How do we fit into the even larger corporate identity of the universe?

During an interim, the UUA wants congregations to ask the questions of corporate identity.  Who are we as a congregation?  How are we the same or different from other UU congregations?  What are our particular gifts, interests, passions, challenges, and needs?  Naming those characteristics of our congregational identity will help your Search Committee find a minister who is a good match for who you are and the work you want to do.

We will get to the issue of corporate identity in the coming weeks.  But to get us started with this identity discussion, I want to start at the issue of personal identity:  “Who am I?”  What does it mean to be me?”

Who are you?

How would you introduce yourself?

Would you start by describing what you do for a living?  That’s a common identifier in our US culture.  Who am I, is often reduced to what I do for work.

Or you might identify yourself by significant relationships.  I’m married.  Or “I’m a mom.”

Who you are might be where you live.  “I live in Long Beach.”  Neighborhoods have identities, too, so which section of the city you live in communicates identity.

How you introduce yourself depends a lot on context.  Am I meeting a stranger at a bar?  A friend of a friend at a party?  A new co-worker?  My girlfirend’s parents?  Or introducing myself before I make a statement during a hearing at City Hall?

Who you are includes a lot of assumptions people make about you based on what they can see for themselves.  Male or female.  Skin color.  Height and weight.  Or what you can tell about me based on the clothes I’m wearing, or how I smell, or the car I drive, or what bumper sticker I choose to put on the back of my car.

But of course, our outward appearance can sometimes be ambiguous, or not a good match for how we name ourselves internally.  Maybe we’re driving a used car and that grateful dead bumper sticker was already there when we bought it.

My husband’s father was African American and his mother is Mexican, so when people look at his skin color the most common guess is that he’s Egyptian – not true at all.  When strangers learn that I’m a minister they instantly make a lot of assumptions that aren’t true about me.  Perhaps you usually dress in a suit but someone happens to meet you dressed for cleaning out the garage and they make a false assumption.  Whether you correct those assumptions or let folks think what they want…, well that also depends on the kind of person you are:  also part of your identity.

Our identities aren’t, in any case, stable.  You may meet me and think I’m frail and not realize that I’ve just been through a bought of the flu.  We’re all, “temporarily able” as the phrase goes.  Our bodies change as we move through life.  Our mental capacities change.  We change jobs, maybe several times.  We aren’t a parent for a long time, and then, maybe, we are.  We’re housed, and then can’t afford the rent so we move into our car, and then we lose the car and become homeless.  All temporary identities.

The question, “Who am I?”  means both, who am I right now.  But also, who am I really?  Who am I beneath the constantly changing surface identities of profession, and family, and physical location, and age?

And of course, the reason that identity is one of the three core spiritual issues, is because upon examination one starts to wonder whether there really is anything lasting and essential about you at your depth, or whether all of your identity is merely fleeting, ephemeral, contingent?

Last week I introduced the idea that personal identity arises from two sources.  There’s an external source, and an internal source.

Part of who we are is a given nature that comes to us, in great part, before we are born, and then created by the circumstances of our childhood, and then those things that happen “to us” throughout our lives.

And then there is the part of our nature that we choose for ourselves.  We receive the givenness of our nature.  But as soon as we become aware of our given nature, we start to respond.  We accept.  We reject.  We try.  We resist.  We hold fast.  We let go.  Every response is a choice.  

And so, we slowly develop a life that is in part, always, a reflection of what we must be, given to us by DNA, and the circumstances of our birth and early childhood, and the culture of the particular time and place we live, and then we are in part the person we choose to be, what we choose to do with the gifts, interests, passions, challenges and needs we found inside us when we started to look for them.

We are thus formed by others and then from the materials given to us we are self-created, the artists of our own being.  We are the person we were created to be, because some of who we are is an inheritance from others who put their physical selves as well as their hopes and dreams and expectations into us.  And we strive to become the person we were meant to be, by responding to an internal truth we intuit about ourselves, a true identity which may or may not closely match the outward circumstances we begin with.

It is a key component of spiritual health to recognize this self-created aspect of ourselves, our power to strive to become the external  expression of an internally intuited identity.  Spiritual health means recognizing and claiming your power to become who you were meant to be, beyond the limitations of what you were created to be.  Spiritual health comes in strengthening our ability to choose our own path, to make our own way, to claim our own truth.  It is spiritual health to not resign to being a victim of circumstances, but to assert the power to be a victor of circumstances.  To live beyond what we were given, to be what we choose.

It is the role of this church to help those who feel their power to celebrate that gift, and then to channel that power to create joyful, healthy, lives for themselves individually and for others generally in the world we share.  Because we know the health and joy in being able to express our true selves in the world, we work to remove the obstacles that hold anyone back from expressing their true selves.  And we work to help those who have become alienated from their power, to find it, to fan it in to a flame, to use it.

“We are building a new way.

Feeling stronger everyday,

We are working to be free

We can feed our every need.”

The fleeting nature of our identity can feel like an existential threat.  Who am I, when everything I can say about myself can slip, or shift, vanish in an instant or be contradicted by an honest assessment of the multiple identities I’ve already held throughout my life.  But, when we are feeling low, or beaten up by life’s troubles, that truth can also shine a light of hope.

“Though days be dark with storms and burdens weigh my heart, Tthough troubles wait at every turn, I know I can go on.  When sorrow heals my soul and burdens make me strong, though troubles wait at every turn, I know I can go on.”

We can feel so beset by circumstances around us.  The weight of the world is heavy at times.  Bad news surrounds us, everywhere these days.  Personal hardships.  Political insanity.  Real dangers that deserve our diligence.  And imagined fears played upon our poor souls deliberately by those who can make profit from our poverty.  Sometimes we feel like victims only because some power wants us to feel like victims, in which case we need a mental shifting.  And sometimes, it is true, that we really are victims, in which case we need a little help and a physical shifting, for ourselves or in our unhealthy social system.

The insight from an examination of the constantly shifting surface of our identity is that the mental and physical shifting that we need to shift from victim to victor is possible.  Every part of what we are currently is susceptible to shifting.  We aren’t now what we were, none of us.  And it it’s a good bet that what we are now we won’t be for long.

That truth is unsettling.  You might even find it disturbing, which is why our egos cling so tightly to the illusion of a stable, permanent self.  It might make you feel uneasy when you realize that you are a constantly changing momentary experience in a constantly changing somewhat illusory reality.

But that truth might also be liberating when you realize that the ever-shifting nature of your “self” and the world about you, means that there is an ever-opening opportunity, moment by moment to be something different than you are.  You are not stuck, because there is no stuckness in this slippery world.  Make a new choice.  Try it out.  Experiment.  Every moment is new.  Every moment is a re-invitation to make a re-invention of you identity.  Your successes must be re-created if you want to have them again, yes, but your failures and failings are also fleeting.  Thank goodness.  Leave them behind at any moment you choose to make a new way.

That ought to feel a little hopeful, yes?

If you’re wishing for a different you than the one you’ve self-created so far, well, here’s your chance.  And here’s another chance.  And here’s another.  Claim victory, or at least pursue it.  Here’s another moment to assert your power, to go on, to build a new way.  Here’s another blank page to start writing a new story.  Here’s the canvas so far, with blank sections still waiting for your brush and the already painted sections can’t prevent you from painting over them with a new design.

Be you.  There’s still time.

Be you.  We need you.