Here are just a few of many pictures I have on my computer taken during the last couple of winters out here in Sedona. And, like many of you, I have many, many photos of me from babyhood onwards in a stash in our cottage on Lake Michigan. Have you ever sat down and spent a fair amount of time going through a goodly number of photos of yourself, spanning perhaps a lifetime? (which by the time you get to be my age, is a pretty long time!) I have done this once in a while, and had the curious feeling that I was looking at someone else in a different lifetime when I studied some of the pictures. "That's me???" I would think as I looked at a snapshot of myself years ago. "I look so different now. I would hardly recognize myself." And then I remember how different I was inside then too....how differently I thought, and believed, and what different perspectives I had at various times in my life. So who is the real me? The person I now appear to be, with the particular perspective and ideas and attitudes I now have? But that can't be. I will be different, I am sure, even a few years from now, let alone a decade or two, if I live that long. Even if I am not on earth that long, I believe I will still be living in some dimension. And I imagine from the vantage point of the after-this-life experience, my viewpoint will be very different from any I had in my lifetime on earth! And my appearance may change a lot too!

So---who I am can't be, essentially, how I appear, or what my ideas or viewpoints are, at any point in my life. And certainly, it can't be what anyone else, even those who think they know me best, think I am. After all, their viewpoint filters everything they perceive about me. And their viewpoints and ideas also change.

Most positively, no pictures of me can begin to capture who I am (or anyone else, for that matter) except in the most fragmentary, momentary way. That is one reason why I have never been big on posting pictures of loved ones all over the place. The pictures are so much less than my memories of them, and I find that sometimes, an often regarded picture can almost replace a living memory, just because the picture gets a lot more attention.

Well then, who am I, really? I think I get to choose what to believe about that. No one else can prove what or who I am in any conclusive way. I choose to believe that I am God's image and God's beloved, and that there is a great mystery at the heart of who I am, and that only God really knows who and what I am, and that will be revealed more and more fully in time to come. I believe that I am a combination of human and divine(God's image) in a unique way. Or, to use a metaphor I love, that I am a song God is always singing. The song keeps changing, but somehow it is the same song, and its music comes straight from the heart of God and goes on forever.

Who do you believe you are?