Blog 3418 – 03.13.2025

Who and Whose You Are

A recurring theme at:

http://www.theencourgingword.co

are the words in the title above and my subject once again today. Let me begin with a quote from one of Huey Lewis and the News’ greatest hits, The Power of Love. The song is featured at the beginning of one of my favorite films, Back To The Future. The quote is:

I submit to you that love does not so much change or transform us as it reveals Who and Whose we truly are.

Another of my favorite movies that I have watched more than a few times and that I try to watch at least a couple of times a year is a Christmas movie called, The Family Stone. It has a wonderful family dynamic and a terrific cast headed by Diane Keaton, in the role of the family matriarch. Craig T. Nelson plays her husband and the father of the Stone family. The children all come home for Christmas, two sisters and three brothers. Dermot Mulroney plays the oldest son and he is bringing home his fiancée played by Sarah Jessica Parker to introduce her to the family and also to get his mother’s wedding ring and engagement ring. They are family heirlooms that have been passed down in the family for several generations and she has promised him when he finds the woman that he loves and intends to marry that she will give them to him. When the oldest son arrives and before Jessica’s character makes her entrance he warns his sibling and especially his mom to go easy on her. The youngest sister portrayed by Rachel McAdams has already met the fiancée having had lunch with her in The City. She thinks her pretentious, phony, and that she talks too much and tries too hard to get people to like her. She also mocks the fiancée’s annoying habit of loudly clearing her throat in an annoying and quite startling way.

The Stone Family is quite a challenge and they do not go easy on the fiancée and she feels so ganged-up-upon that in tears she calls her sister, played by Claire Danes, to come to the university town where the Stone Family progenitors live. Dad is a professor at the university.

Mom is the harshest and hardest on the fiancée and also refuses to hand over the rings when her oldest asks for them.

Young people never think their parents really know them or know whom they should marry. Let me just say there is quite a bit of evidence that marriages arranged by the parents had a much higher success rate than those without parental blessings. As for parents not knowing you, children forget that their parents watched them intensely during those first the three years of their lives as their personalities developed. Arguably parents may often know us better than we know ourselves.

There is a line in the movie where the parents are sharing their fears regarding their oldest son and the dad says, “What worries me most about this match is that he really does know who he is.” It turns out that when the oldest son meets his fiancée sister he finds his true match and the fiancée finds one of his brothers a better match for her. This makes for a lot of drama as well as more than a few laughs.

I believe that our adventures in time and space are all quests to discover Who and Whose we are. There are clues, truths that are as self-evident as those inalienable rights that we have been endowed with by our Creator, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The Bible asks the question, “Who is the Lord of glory?” Even as Moses asks the God of the burning bush, “Whom shall I say is sending me?” The answer to both questions is: Our higher and best self or plainly “I am.”

God is Love. Love is God. In Love we see ourselves reflected in the Beloved. In the creation story. All the animals were brought before the man to name and after he had named them all he said, “There is not one like me.” So God caused a deep sleep to come upon him and while the man slept he took a rib that had been close to his heart, then closed up the place, and the man’s own flesh and bone fashion a companion for him, a helpmate, to help him discover Who and Whose he truly was.

It is no accident that we often refer to our mate as our better half for it is the power of love to see the divine in another and also in ourself.

“Come dance with me, come sing with me, come walk with me, come talk with me, come ride with me, come fly with me, come follow me like you used to do. I can still show you who (and whose) you are.”

Your friend and fellow traveler

David James White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19CDkk3iq8QB_Ccty1QLes7I1EQ0_K7cX/view?usp=drivesdk

No Night So Long