We are...
mask, no mask, left, right, red, blue, white, black, male, female, other...actually...
"We are" - "Penn State!" If you have been to a Penn State football game or wrestling match which I highly suggest then you know what I mean. But, perhaps, I digress...
"I am" vs. "I am He" seems to be a very subtle difference at first but upon further inspection there is a very important distinction. For you see, in many ancient languages you could have a sentence with only verbs and there are some who think that language itself started with verbs. Basically, started with action not just description. Why do I feel this is so important? Because, I see a tendency in society to refer to ourselves and others as a noun instead of recognizing our identity as a verb. I prefer to view myself and the world as a verb, alive and in action. For example, do you like to be known as a wrestler or do you actually love to wrestle? Furthermore, does your love to wrestle motivate you to do the things which improve your ability to do so such as study technique, drill, strength train, run and other activities to improve your conditioning, etc. etc. Another example, are you a religious person or does your love of God motivate you to pray, read scripture, attend services, participate in the mysteries (sacraments) etc. etc. so as to improve your relationship with God (and hopefully as a result to all of your fellow humans). To close out this paragraph, "I am" is the name given to Moses by God in the Burning Bush, it is also the reply given by Jesus to the high priest during his trial as written in the Gospel of St. Mark. I do not want this blog to turn into a total theological and linguistical study but the original NT statements of Jesus written in Greek "ego eimi" (I am) are often found in modern English translations as "I am He" and there is a significant difference.
Now, who are we? If you only view the world through social media lenses and its seemingly increasing divisiveness some key words of which I mention in the intro sentence of this blog then you made be lead to believe that the only unity is in shared emotions such as anger, fear and the like. Small controversial moments in time are being shared with such repetition that they soon take on the guise of a universal truth (there is truth and He let us know by stating "I am" ;-)). Anyhow, if we allow our perceptions of what we see on social media and media in general to become our way of understanding the world around us then we are certainly headed for total disaster. We have heard it said that you are what you eat and today it seems like we are eating up a lot of negativity being fed by all the media platforms and then being exponentially multiplied by all the social media platforms. I am going to suggest to stop becoming what we behold and start by beholding ourselves. We must ask ourselves the question where do we see ourselves or even where do we want to see ourselves in the future? Hopefully, when we are envisioning our future we are seeing and setting high and noble goals and tasks before ourselves. We start at this end vison of ourselves and then work back and very deliberately make our present actions to reflect who we want to be and thereby these very actions we will become who we are.
