Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Self-Identity

You have a true self. Purpose, meaning, and fulfillment are the result of recognizing, defining, and living consistently with this fundamental identity.

Communities – including our workplaces – have a true self. We usually refer to this as a culture. Choosing to operate in a manner that is consistent with the community’s origins, purposes, and unique promise is a path to fulfillment.

Moses and his people are a persuasive example of this truth. There are many more examples. Significant achievement – both good and ill – is consistently tied to a passionate search for self.

Yet the search for self is often discouraged. Leaders sometimes subvert and pervert the essential character of their community. Parents sometimes reject their children’s essential selves. Most of us behave and believe in ways that deny some aspect of our fundamental identity. No wonder we can be confused and dissatisfied.

Moses was born into oppression. Through the guile of his mother and happy accident he was raised in privilege and power. In a moment of uncontrolled passion and fear he lost all his early advantages and lived for many years separated from everything he had known.

During this period of self-exile Moses married, became a father, and earned his living as a shepherd for his father-in-law. He subordinated himself. He accommodated himself to his context and immediate needs. He continued, however, to feel out-of-place. Moses named his son Gershom. In Hebrew ger means foreigner.

Moses then encountered a bush burning on the slopes of a mountain. It was some sort of thorny or prickly bush. The Hebrew word for this bush, seneh’, is used exclusively in the Bible to refer to the bush that Moses encountered. It certainly pricked the attention of Moses. Scripture says, “When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” (Exodus (3:4). The implication is that if Moses had ignored the strange phenomenon or fled from it, God would not have called him.

The metaphor is surely not accidental. Whatever Moses encountered on the slopes of Mt. Horeb it pricked his conscience, his memory, his sense of self and it ignited an unquenchable fire of self-discovery and reclamation of self. He could have walked away, but he did not. Instead he sought out the fire and found himself. The finding began on that mountain-top and continued for four decades. In the process Moses led his entire people in rediscovering their fundamental identity.

On Mt. Horeb Moses found his essential reality, his ultimate source of meaning, and his true self. Moses believed this same reality is available to each of us. In the books of Moses we find six characteristics of the true self that are universally shared:
1. Creating
2. Empowering
3. Loving
4. Refraining
5. Framing
6. Redeeming

How these shared characteristics are expressed will be unique to each individual, each culture, and each context. But by behaving consistently and coherently with these six characteristics we are able to find ourselves, differentiate ourselves, and find the fulfillment of purpose and meaning that otherwise is absent.

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