Curate's Letter

May I take this opportunity to wish you a happy new year. Although we are well into January, we are still in the process of catching up with folks that we last met with in 2019. The marked change from 2019 to 2020 seems to mark such a great transition yet so many other cycles seem to only nod to the imperceptible change of adding another year on. Our annual cycle of liturgy for example, began on the first Sunday of Advent.

January of a new year appears to herald such new and vibrant opportunities. New resolutions, and of course the myriad of adverts suddenly appearing on telly of different ways to lose weight. Spring is just around the corner and the pressure is on to get ourselves ready for summer madness. An identity that must be approved by the world, and to be acceptable in society. Of course, this approach ensures that paranoia accompanies the person seeking to have their new, slimmer identity conform to the world's standard. Who manages to achieve this? Usually, not a soul. Not really. The fake persona shown to the world on social media masks and hides what's underneath, but below the layers of carefully crafted worldly identity, there is a different story going on. And the story usually involves loneliness, and searching, and the desire for love.

Who are you really? That's the question being asked. Not what one does to earn a living. Not what one does in spare time or as a hobby. But we're normally too busy and distracted to address it. Paul Swann writes in his book on Sustaining Leadership, "It's as if we each carry a weighty rucksack that we fail to notice, because we have enough strength to carry it and enough busyness to be distracted from it. Then circumstances bring it to our attention and force us to deal with what we have been carrying." He states that it's taken him a long time to lessen the load and considerable professional help to begin emptying that rucksack, and he now carries a lighter load. He says that a key part of the healing process is to shed the outer layers of protection we have put in place and to accept who we are in our weakness.

That process, that path, stripping us of our worldly identity is part of our walk with God. We read on the second Sunday of Epiphany from Psalm 40. We identified with the psalmist, in reaching out to God. Key words and phrases from the psalm include, 'he heard my cry; he set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure; a new song; trust; an open ear; steadfast love and faithfulness.' Words that uphold and encourage us. Words that speak of love, because God is love. He is love to all of us, for all of us, if we allow him. That love will shape our identity. In order that we might allow that love to pervade every part of our lives, we need to trust him.

As trust in God deepens, so our identity changes. No longer are we dependent on the views, the labels, the categorisations of others to give us our identity. We accept the label given us from society because of our need, as humans, to conform to something. But… that is not who we are. Our identity lies with who God is, and who and what he represents. As the Psalmist said, "The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me."

We are to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus. Henri Nouwen writes, "For as long as you can remember, you have been dependent on others to give you an identity. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you." It is often when we lose our carefully crafted identity we experience God upholding us, and then we come out of that experience more alive. Our reality has changed in that we are no longer beholden to the labels, categories or aspersions cast by church or society but to that reality, that identity which God has for us.

I wonder, in this new season, whether this is an opportunity to change one's focus from the identity provided by the world to that held by God. One of steadfast love and faithfulness. One where identity is not marked by success or failure, but by God's unwavering love.

Ellie Charman