Contemplating Authentic Self

Soon I will be nearing the half-way mark of my training. It will happen while I am with four other health trainees at our CBT (Community Based Training) site. Currently I and the 31 other trainees are all together in the provincial capital for more technical training and so I have time to reflect (and I have access to a cyber-cafe!) on what such a marker means. It means on one hand soon I will be pushed out on my own into rural Morocco to begin my service. On the other it means I can start to think about what is the point of training, the role of a Peace Corps Volunteer, how Peace Corps as a development organization works, the cross-cultural issues which occur, and what it means to be an American living in Morocco. Vocation stuff galore!

Throughout the technical training in Azilal and the cultural and language training in our CBT sites the over-arching themes have been (besides gaining health related technical skills): integration and sustainability. Both of these words contain many concepts and can be elaborated on for hours, but I think it is easy to boil them down into Cardoner’s three approaches to community: relationship with oneself (and God); relationship with community; and the tensive relationship between individual fulfillment and personal sacrifice. I hope to elaborate on each of these in turn, but for this post I would like to focus on the first, the understanding of self.

A huge chunk of training was and is preparing us for immersion and integration into a Moroccan community. That is key to the PC experience; what makes the organization so different from every other development agency is that intimate human connection. In order to successfully do this we need to know the history, culture, religion, language, customs and laws of Morocco. But more importantly--the most important--is to understand the "who" we as Americans are. In other words, to know and understand what the assumptions, shared experiences, and the worldview we are bringing with us are. This causes us to engage with one another to come up with a shared understanding of “American culture”, yet at the same time causes us to look deeply into ourselves to grasp who we as individuals are. What assumptions am I working with? What conceptual scheme do I arrange my references points in?

Yet, such considerations do not happen just in the seminars or alone at night or when writing a blog entry; they occur in every interaction we have with Moroccans and with the other trainees. Devoid of a context and people who know us we can freely narrate a story about our identity, and in so doing can edit the persona we are constantly presenting. Trying to forge friendships with trainees and Host Country Nationals, or just deciding to wear a Jalaba or hijab, is done against a backdrop of such questions as “Is this congruent with who I really am?", "Is this who I want to present as the real Josh?", "Do I know the real Josh enough to enter this foreign community and integrate but not assimilate?”. However, such questions do not necessarily need to be asked by people living outside of the United States. They seem to be universal questions to understanding self hood.

Searching and finding

It seems I have been on a lifelong journey to finding myself. Somewhere along the line I got the idea that there was a ‘self’ to be found. A ‘self’ that if and when found would be a perfect fit; both internally, with all the jumbled self perceptions, characteristics, multiple personalities and desires; and externally, with all the expectations, opportunities and possibilities. Somehow I would find this perfectly fitting ‘self’. I would put it on and it would define and mold all these internal and external synchronicities and contradictions into a perfect me and I would be at peace.

Recently there have been multiple opportunities for me to reflect on this ‘finding of self’. Things seem to go like that sometimes. Life seems to get orchestrated to focus on one or more of ‘my issues’. Focusing events and lenses seem to pop up repeatedly over a short time span. Maybe it’s just my internal selective viewing of daily life that seems to coalesce events, endowing disjoint occurrences with extra meaning; creating a whole that is more than the sum of the parts. Maybe it's just the nature of human intelligence – to take events and find patterns; a characteristic of being in the image and likeness of God; to find order in chaos.

In January, my wife and I were on a 30 day retreat. Much of this time was spent on consciously examining all the external definitions of me, my life history so to speak, and then trying to strip off all the influences to find what might have been before; before the joys and pains of this existence moved me to develop certain proclivities and avoidances. This examination was done in the shadow of a re-realization, re-acquaintance with the primary truth that God loves; loves each individually and personally, deeply, always and without reservation.

Shortly after the retreat, I participated in a small way with a spring break trip to Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations. I watched and listened. I came away appreciating the value of discovering a shared identity, being part of a strong community, and the importance of finding a spiritual heritage. These were shadowed by an intimation of the difficulties of overcoming long term perceptions, identification with low worth, a feeling of being a castaway in the surrounding culture, a small glimpse into what being lost at home might feel like.

A few days later, I listened to Fr. Ron Rolheiser talk about the importance of being blessed; being beloved; of having a respected person of our same gender, a ‘parent’ figure call us beloved and tell us we were the child in whom they were well-pleased; someone to affirm that we are ‘seen’ and validated as positive.

With Augustine, I come to the realization that my search for God and my search for self are closely related. We both have looked everywhere and finally glimpsed God within. As I move toward identifying self, I get closer to God. As I learn more about this concept and mystery named God, I learn more about me. I am made in the image and likeness of God, I am a mystery.

Borrowing from thoughts I recently encountered in a book by Michael Himes; if, in a brief and eloquent sentence, I could express an all-encompassing definition of who either God is or I am it would immediately be wrong for change would have occurred in the process.

So I have to move past this search for the perfect self-definition and grow content with here and now. Be present, be open and accept that I am becoming. In God, grounded in the past, incomplete in the present, eternally growing and evolving; I am and always will be becoming.

The light on the path and simultaneously the pull in the right direction is the totally unjustified, yet always present, always unconditional Love.