In the next few days I’ll verbalize some thoughts I had wgile on the Retreat I participated in at Renovare. In the first session Trevor Hudson helped us to walk with Jesus towards his baptism. Here is a short reflection on that:

Underlying most of our thoughts, actions and speech are a nagging question. Who am I? The answers to this question consist of no mono-answer. We are offered a plethora of options for answering it. Psychology gives us means and ways to classify ourselves and others. History glances on time in order to place people in winning/loosing binaries and it usually depends whose accounts we read. The free market capitalistic answer helps us by constructing identities by what we own and don’t own. Then there is the option of race and nations; through a racial/national lens we can discover an identity for ourselves. And then there is theology. In theology, literally a word of God – we construe our identity by what the Creator says about us. It is in this way of discovering identity that I’ve found a way to freedom. In Henri Nouwen’s phrase I then find my identity to be built on the invitation of ‘being the Beloved’. [Artwork by Charlie Mackesy]