just enough light

Thinking back on yesterday’s writing, I have written other “spiritual autobiographies” since that one in 1971. Each represents a different time in my life, a different understanding of myself, my history, my place in the world. As I looked back through that “Personal Document” from 1971, I came back to a phrase by Parker Palmer, “my youthful lies.” Palmer writes, “My youthful lies weren’t intentional. I just didn’t know enough about myself, the world, and the right relationship of the two to tell the truth. So what I said on those subjects often came from my ego, a notorious liar.” (Palmer, On the Brink of Everything, p. 23).

That hit home. At any time in our lives, all we can do is tell what we know, or what we think we know. With time and experience, hopefully, we know more, we see things from a different place in life, thus making our previous positions unintended youthful lies. In 1971, when I made my first serious attempt to write my spiritual autobiography, it said all the things I thought I should say about being who I was. I was engaged in self-impersonation, another term from Parker that he borrowed from Thomas Merton. I was impersonating my version of a good Christian boy. I was acting out the part of what I thought Paul and Connie’s second son should be like. I was writing the spiritual autobiography of a good seminary student trying to impress his professor.

It was not an intentional impersonation. It was all I knew at the time. It was as authentic as my developing self would allow myself to be. No wonder I had such doubts about myself and my beliefs, all the while appearing quite certain and confident. That’s what good impersonators do. And I was good.

In all those developmental transitions, the task is to decide what to hold onto and what to let go. In reading that Personal Document, I recognized some valuable things I got growing up, some pillars to support my life structure. Much of what I absorbed in my growing up has shaped who I am today. Hold onto those things. Those beliefs that came with trying to impersonate myself, those can go as I uncover them.