authenticity

i spent this past weekend up in the mountains.

i was asked to speak to a group of high schoolers, to inspire them, i guess, or to educate them, or to instill in them something new or bring out something old and not known or dealt with. i'm not quite sure. i just knew that i was going to speak what God has taught me and what i wished that i had heard when i was in high school, and that really, it was God's deal to do anything with it.

it was this weekend that i watched a friend let go.

i watched him let go of a burden that he had consented to bearing under the presupposition that only by bearing it could he be approved by others (the image of robert deniro in "the mission", carrying the tools of his former life up a waterfall in the jungle comes to mind).
there is something weird about wanted approval, we lose ourselves. we become an imagined entity. this entity might not even be what the givers of the burden have imagined, but the one that we imagine that they imagine. it becomes a figment of our imagination only, something we bring into reality which is not real at all. it is making our yes a no and our no a yes. we participate in a lie to the detriment of only ourselves.
in watching the movie "before sunset", i was struck by the sheer honesty of ethan hawke's character as he laments his life decisions saying something to the effect that when he married his current wife he did so as his "best" self, the self that was responsible, the self that was buying into being a part of the expectations that surrounded him, the self that denied the importance of a connection for the greater good of commitment, but he wished that he had been true to his "true" self, the one that told him to wait for something special, that it wasn't a lie, that it was the connection, the inexplicable that was somehow true, that deep down inside he knew all along, but decided, regrettably, to go with the crowd.
it was freeing watching someone let go of a burden that they had carried too long. it was like jeremy irons reaching down, as deniro struggles to the top of the waterfall, and cutting his burden off.
no one really told either of these two they had to carry their burden, they were both self imposed, yet they carry them to the chagrin of those around them. the amazing thing is that it seems that these burdens are impossibly obvious to everyone around them, yet the bearer bears it in his isolation pretending himself, not to notice and that his struggles are just the regular struggles of a difficult task.

inauthenticity is a lie. if we are inauthentic then we consort with the Lie himself and we become people of the lie. in becoming people of the lie we lose ourselves and the very talent that was given to us we do not reproduce but bury deep down inside, and when we are approached by the giver of this talent he is justified in saying that he never knew us.
to be known, that deep desire of our hearts, we must be authentic. we must be both sinner and saint, we must not be our best selves, but our true selves.

come to me all who are weary and i will give you rest for my burden is easy and my yoke is light