In the 60’s there was a paperback called, “Why am I afraid to tell you who I am?” That’s basically all I remember of it except we read it in youth group and when we talked about it there were most always tears. Insights can do that for you, release those healing tears. In First Community Church helping youth discover their truest self was a big part of the underlying message of God’s love they shared. The other underlying message was that we had been given gifts and skills and our work was to find out what they were and use them for the good.
We did that by learning to tell truth and not be afraid of our own truth. Many of the youth came from wealthy families. The Church had a camp, Akita (the searcher) and it was at camp that a lot of the ‘work’ was done. I was lucky enough to go from 2 grade thru High School. (When I went in High School I signed on to the kitchen crew. That way I got to be at camp and participate I loved it. My job was to take the hot dishes out of the dishwasher rack and get the empty rack to the dishwasher so it could be loaded. By the third day I was able to grab the plates right as they came out of the rack. I was on KP three weeks. I loved it. ) (Did you figure out I loved camp)
One of the reasons I loved camp is that the facades fell from the teenagers and they became more genuine. When I was a teen camper I remember seeing that. Some of the girls who wouldn’t really hang out with me were welcoming. They were fun. They were open. They were just friends. We were encouraged to hold on to how that felt when we got home. At church, a week after camp their facades were all in place again. They didn’t really speak to anyone outside their group, clique, and several of us noticed. In our discussion time one girl who had been at camp asked them what happened to the fun girls were? One of the girls began to cry. The teacher let her cry a little and comforted her. What is the source of those tears. She said, “At camp I can be who I really am inside. But, when I get home my parents expect me to be fake and like this. They won’t let me change.” Here I’d envied her and her position in the group and I realized really how free I was to be me.
Karl Jung wrote,
the main aim of life is to develop a balanced psyche through individuation: the process of becoming the most complete and authentic version of yourself.
That’s what my church was encouraging us to be. It wasn’t a goal that you could ever finish because we change and mature if we are lucky and we keep aiming to become the most complete and authentic version of ourselves. It’s what we do for each other. We walk each other home as Desmond TuTu is reported to have said. Home to that place of our truest self. To that sense of satisfaction and peaceful of the soul that allows us to walk with others who are also on the journey.
I wish you a good journey. I wish you companions on that journey to your most authentic self. I wish you peacefulness and I wish you joy. I would often close my church services saying as a blessing,
God knows you through and through and loves you even still.
God abides and I thank God. Bobbie Giltz McGarey @2023 Easton PA.
The Spirit Will Tell You 