Epiphany for Advent

I had an epiphany yesterday. Not a very big one; in fact I suppose what I realized should go pretty much without saying. Nevertheless, it was one of those major shifts in thinking that makes so much seem to slip into place -- the big "Aha!" moment.

I am reading Karen Armstrong's "A History of God" and, as always when I read this kind of book, I found myself agreeing with many of the perspectives presented from multiple different religions. I wondered again what I actually believe, considering how easy it is for me to identify with -- actually inhabit -- so many of the beliefs of others. What I realized was that I have been asking the wrong half of the question. It's not the belief that is at question, it is the I. I am not the same person today that I was even yesterday, and will be a different me even 5 minutes from now. Why should I expect what each of these selves believes to be exactly the same?

Most of us believe that whatever we take to be the ultimate, to be supreme ("God," many of us call it), is "the same yesterday, today, and forever," and we generally even agree that each of us seeks and worships this same ultimate; even though we go about it in many different ways. I call myself Christian because that is the tradition I am steeped in, my cultural background, my practice, the path that I use to get to the point of transcending paths completely. But, as I learn more about other perspectives, particularly as I learn to love and identify with people whose background is from those other perspectives, I find myself increasingly seeing and experiencing things through those other perspectives as well. The inconsistency is not in the belief but in my sense of a stable I. As I have attempted to learn the art of compassion, of truly "feeling with" another, my sense of who I am has gotten a bit frayed around the edges. I am also whoever I am feeling with, the ones I am learning to love "as myself." Erikson thought that the choices of advanced age are between ego integrity and despair. While I agree with him that ego integrity (knowing and coming to terms with who we are and all that we have been in life) is important, I think there is also a process of ego dissolution that comes into play, at least for some; the realization that we are part of each other to such a degree that the idea of a separate self seems almost an illusion. Thus also, the question of what I believe is an illusion -- both nothing and everything, and all at once!

This epiphany -- realizing that it's simply the nature of my ever-changing I to believe with others in the measure I identify with them -- makes the lessons today on Jerusalem (Isaiah 2:1-5, Psalm 122) particularly poignant. In each passage, Jerusalem is lifted up as a place of peace where God teaches his ways to all the peoples -- "Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity with itself." These words should be true! All those who fight over this city and the places of God within it claim to believe ultimately in the same God. In Jerusalem we have the opportunity, unparalleled in any other place in the world, to prove the truth of that claim. If we could only learn to employ the discipline of seeing things compassionately, through each other's eyes... Therefore, my Advent discipline: " Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: 'May they prosper who love you. Peace be within your walls and quietness within your towers. For my brethren and companion's sake, I pray for your prosperity. Because of the house of the Loud our God, I will seek to do you good.'"

--AnnBarbie