Blog 987 – 05.07.2018

This Is Me

“I am not a stranger to the dark

Hide away, they say

‘Cause we don’t want your broken parts

I’ve learned to be ashamed of all my scars

Run away, they say

No one’ll love you as you are

But I won’t let them break me down to dust

I know that there’s a place for us

For we are glorious.”

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1L9q9_crE_rbAhffQCKWMJMdZgOxSHlY9

And not just because she reminds me so much of my marvelous and dearly departed daughter Emily, the incredibly talented but perhaps not so obviously outwardly beautiful lady who sings these wonderful words in The Greatest Showman to borrow another movie – had me at “This is me.” We, all of us, to some degree battle the feeling of “otherness, less-than-ness.” How truly marvelous and glorious it is to come to the knowledge of Who and Whose we truly are. And many of us come to it from so many and various directions.

But usually it happens for many of us when someone else first sees or rather notices something “special” in us. In this lady as in my dear Emily it was her tremendous voice. The first two “glorious” girls that a young Phineas Taylor Barnum, P.T., in the movie met were a lovely blonde girl and a hooded less obviously attractive girl, both of whose greatest beauty secret lay in their deep love and compassion. It is a wonderful movie. Do see it if you have not yet, and see it again and again. It will help you see how beautiful and glorious we all are.

I have written at length elsewhere regarding a term Jesus used in teaching his disciples called, “The least of these my brethren.” While the boys were always vying for positions of honor and seats on his right and left Jesus consistently said, those places of honor had already been “reserved.” For whom you might ask. Well for me, for us, those who once felt “least” but never ever really were but always were full brothers and sisters none the less.

If you think it presumptuous of me to wear a rhinestone necklace that says “Sexy” (Someone who knows me better than most sent it to me and I only wore it once for the picture) or to even attempt a Mockingbird version of “This Is Me” well perhaps you just don’t know me that well yet. But keep reading and listening and you will. And when you really do, you will know you better too, for we are One. Everyone of us has scars, the deepest and the most painful are often the least visible. But we are so much more than our scars. And even scars testify to things over come and victories won. We are Glorious.

Your friend, fellow traveler,

And equally glorious and sexy friend,

David White

(Already missing the snow this glorious spring)