April 4, 2017 Rev. Karen Fitz La Barge
Inside, Outside. All around the Back Side, Front Side,
Inside Out.
Feelings of the Inside, expressed on the Outside.
Feelings on the Inside, fear and doubt.
Acting from the Inside. Reacting to the Outside.
Never pausing to think, what’s life about?
Changing all the inside.
To effect all on the outside.
Changing from the inside.
Inside Out.
Poem by Karen Fitz La Barge, 4/28/2000
The other day, I was going through some of the old files on my computer, and I came across this poem that I wrote while I was in Seminary. It is a reflection on an event that I attended, keynoted by the celebrated author on Spirituality, Parker Palmer. During the event, Parker described how many people are afraid to allow themselves to become the person that God designed them to be. Inside of their heads and hearts, they doubt that anyone will affirm them in their deepest longings, and so they themselves don’t affirm those longings in themselves either. They are afraid that they will never have what it takes to become who it is that they are called to be. And so instead of leading the life that they are longing to live, (The life that uses the gifts and follows the desires that God has given them), they lie to themselves about who they are, and they instead react to outside pressures and try to live by awkwardly fitting into someone else’s expectations for them. (Their life never seems to fit them quite right, but instead always feels like they are wearing someone else’s shoes. ) –But ultimately the fears and the doubts that they feel inside will become how they live their life in the world, always looking in fear for someone’s disapproval, always doubting their own ability to be God’s unique and wonderful creation that only they can be.
During the presentation, Parker used the image of a mobius strip. This very fascinating mathematic object can be created by cutting a strip of paper, flipping one end of the strip upside down and then taping both ends together. If you were an ant traveling along the length of a mobius strip, and you started walking along the strip where you taped it together, soon you would be upside down over your starting point, and if you kept walking, you would ultimately walk all the way around the outside to the inside again. The inside and the outside of a mobius strip are interconnected and are both part of the same journey. This very accurately describes how we humans work. Who we are on the inside will come out on the outside. If we are afraid on the inside, those fears will be part of how we relate to the world. But it also means that when we on the inside acknowledge and live into becoming into the new creation who God designed us to be, that new person will show up on the outside and become apparent to all. When we allow ourselves to be courageous enough to follow God’s call on our lives, when we allow ourselves to be who God wants us to be, it is like a new person is born.
Listen to this scripture from the Message translation from 2 Corinthians 5:16-20. Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you.
This is the scriptural description of being born again. And that new person that God has created and called will, if we allow it to grow in love and in kindness, soon be easily recognizable to everyone on the outside, lending courage to other people to also follow their unique callings from God. This sort of change, from the inside out, is what we are each called to do through Christ.
Will you do it?
