Most folk are surprised to hear me say that I spend most of my life silent, not speaking. Even when I am in company my ears are far more engaged than my mouth. This is who I am and yet my public persona is not this and I think people perceive me as someone who has a lot to say. This is not who I am. Maybe it is the paradox of my human being. Then again there are many layers to each one’s humanity, everyone contains multitudes of contradictions.
Our inner and our outer persona do not always align, or at least not to the casual observer. Hannah Arendt observed ““Nothing and nobody exists in this world whose very being does not presuppose a spectator.” For each of us, there is a public persona encasing the private person, an aspirational self, radiating from the real self.
We each have a public face that we show the world and then there is the inner person. We think we know each other, but in many ways we do not. This is often true of public figures who we are given a sanitised view of, but it isn’t their true selves. I have noticed this with footballers when they are interviewed. They give a cliched response often, saying very little, this is probably for fear of being misunderstood. When often what we would like is to see the real person. We rarely get to see the whole of anyone. We all wear masks.
I have been thinking much of my time as a ministry student in Macclesfield. We earlier heard a reading from Rev Michael Dadson who was minister on my first placement. It is a strange thing stepping into an unfamiliar congregation or in Peter’s case congregations. It took me quite some time to find my own voice there, to be myself. To be authentically me, to show anything of me for some time. I do remember this being noted by members of the congregation at the time and that when I began to speak more freely and openly and that they appreciated getting to know me. I learnt that the most personal is the most universal as it allows people to identify. You need to put flesh on the words. I think it was one of the most valuable lessons of ministry. I think that over time the mask did begin to slowly be removed and the person leading was closer to the real person. They got to see the man behind the mask, which I believe they were longing for. Now what is interesting is that I didn’t learn this from Michael as he rarely showed himself in such a way. That said we are not here mimic; we are here to become all that we can be. As Michael himself said in the earlier reading, we are here to let it show.
Masks have been on my mind of late. I was reminded of terrifying children’s character the other day “Noseybonk” or “Mr Noseybonk” from the children’s television series of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s “Jigsaw”. It was a program aimed at primary school children. It was quite strange and “Mr Noseybonk” reminded me of a character from “A Clockwork Orange”. It is not that different from the Alex Droog character played by Malcolm McDowell. I don’t know if the intention was to scare children, but it certainly worked. It seemed that this character did inspire horror. “Noseybonk” inspired the character “Mr Chuckleteeth in the X-Files episode “Familiar. It is thought that this was then the inspiration behind the character “Jigsaw” from the horror movie franchise “Saw”. I am certain that the inner workings that created the children’s education tv program “Jigsaw” would never have dreamed of ending up down that Rabbit hole. Then again seemingly innocent children’s stories were often hiding something beneath the surface.
There are many layers to everything it seems.
It brings to my mind one of my favourite ever poems “The Layers” by Stanley Kunitz. By the way it is one of those opening lines I often misquote.
“The Layers” by Stanley Kunitz
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
“Live in the layers, not on the litter.” There is some beautiful wisdom here. There are many layers to explore in this incredible piece written at the end of his long life. I have explored it before. It is the opening though that speaks to me here, the one I often misquote.
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
We ought never be afraid to let that show.
We all wear masks that cover up aspects of ourselves and or reveal something we are attempting to portray. How often do we let our whole selves be seen? We are all a ball of complexity, paradox and contradictions. To quote good old Walt Whitman “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes) This is the real you and me perhaps, there in the contradictions and complexities of our humanity. It is what we have in common I suspect. Yet we show our public faces, we wear our masks.
There is nothing new under the sun, including this sermon.
We have always worn masks, ever since the beginning of human society. The masks have depicted the multiple aspects of humanity, the many ‘selves’ that lie within each and every one of us, our multitude, the layers of our lives. In the plays of ancient Greece masks were worn and exchanged by the players to depict each individual’s persona. The word ‘persona” itself is actually derived from per-sonare which meant “to sound through”? It was not only the face of the character that was expressed through the mask, but also the voice was exaggerated too. There is something beautifully powerful in this, it’s a wonderful metaphor for who we are as human beings. In many ways we can be identified as much by our voices as our faces and we can attempt to cover up who we our through our voices too. I know when I find myself I always find my authentic voice.
I was talking with a friend the other day about how much my voice has changed over time, how my speech has altered. I have to some extent lost my accent, not completely I know but to some extent at least. This is no doubt due in part to having to speak publicly and also not living in Yorkshire for nearly 30 years. Now my friend laughed out loud at this as to them I have quite a strong accent, but it is nothing like it used to be. I have not deliberately changed the way I speak but never the less it has happened. It fascinates me how some people seem to pick up accents very easily and yet others hang on to theirs even if they have left their homelands decades before. So much of who we are, our persona is caught up in our voices as well as our facial features. The masks we can wear not only cover our faces, but our voices too. We are no different to the ancient Greeks, there is nothing new under the sun, we are contain our many multitudes.
Masks of course are not only the domain of ancient times either. Many of our modern day heroes wear masks too. In many ways the hero has to wear a mask in order to protect his identity and therefore walk through life anonymously. It seems a hero cannot be a hero twenty four hours a day seven days a week three hundred and sixty five days of the year. The demands and the pressures it seems would be too much. Think about Zoro who has to don his mask in order to fight for his people; think about Batman and Spiderman too who’s greatest fears are to be unmasked. There are numerous other examples too.
Now there is a part of me that just doesn’t like any of this. This idea of hiding who we are or having to be transformed into someone else to become a hero or a completely different personality. There is a loneliness in it that I want to rebel against. Think about it, all those heroes have a loneliness about them. They all have a dark side, they somehow can’t quite connect with everyone else.
As I thought of this those childhood memories came flooding back. It particularly brought one image that has often haunted me, that of the scarecrow, perhaps the epitome of a loneliness in effigy. They are the loneliest of the lonely. I find scarecrows haunting figures. Many towns have scarecrow festivals and I find them all a bit spooky. They bring images of the “Wicker Man” to me.
Now of course usually the scarecrow is depicted as rather lovely semi-human creatures and there was one that I had a deep affection for as a child. That scarecrow was Wurzel Gummage. Like Jigsaw it was first aired in the later 1970’s and early 1980’s. Does anyone remember Wurzel? I loved Wurzel but I know many friends who found him quite scary.
Wurzel like so many other children’s characters desperately wanted to fit in to be a part of life, but never really succeeded. Now while he didn’t wear a mask he did something far more extreme. He would have to painfully remove his head and replace it with another totally different one that completely changed his personality. For poor old Wurzel whatever he did always ended in disaster and he could never be what he tried so hard to be. He was always on the outside looking at the world alone, a scarecrow not a part of human life. He wore a different head for every occasion but that did not help him become what he wanted to be.
How many of us wear masks or put on different heads in our attempts to be accepted? Why do we believe we are not good enough just as we are, exactly as we are in this present moment, warts and all and beauty spots too? Why do we believe we need to act differently around certain people just to fit in. why do we think we need to wear different masks or even heads for different occasions and even change the way that we speak in order to fit in and be accepted? Why can’t accept ourselves and many layers with all our contradictions and complexities.
It never works you know, it only leads to loneliness and emptiness. Why? You may well ask, well because deep down inside we know it’s not who we really are. It means we just stand there as scarecrows staring at the world as it passes us by or we just sit there staring at the world giving our running commentaries and criticism without ever participating.
I believe that authenticity is at the core of the spiritual life. In fact I would say that the purpose of the spiritual life is to truly become real and to let go of the masks that we think allow us fit in and become acceptable to the world around us. It’s not about what we show to the world outside of us but how we live from our hearts and souls. It’s not about showing this stage character that we think the world wants to see but to be ourselves wholly and fully. To be who we truly are and to let it show.
The purpose of the spiritual life is to become who we truly are. It is to remove the masks so that we can truly connect to life and to one another and see each other as we truly are, warts and all and beauty spots too. The spiritual life is about connecting to all that is, all that has been and all that will ever be so that time becomes thick and deep and therefore rich in meaning. In so doing we are able to truly serve our world and the people about us and therefore incarnate God’s love here and now and bring about the commonwealth of love in our very lives.
It’s about removing the masks that shield and separate us and seeing one another face to face and speaking our truth in love.
Let’s truly live in the many layers of our lives, let it truly show, the many multitudes that make up our humanity and in so doing we will encourage others to so also.
We are here to let it show.
Amen
Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "Blogspot"
