...life, revealed

Gracious Spirit, dwell with me, I would gracious be;

help me now thy grace to see, I would be like thee;

and, with words that help and heal, thy life would mine reveal;

and, with actions bold and meek, for Christ my Savior speak.

---Thomas Toke Lynch, 1855

One of my favorite movies as a child was Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book. A soundtrack highlight for me was the scat jazz ‘I Wanna Be Like You’, sung by the masterful Louis Prima and penned by Richard and Robert Sherman. In the chorus, King Louie sings,

            Oh, ooh-bee-doo, I wanna be like you-hu-hu,

            I wanna walk like you, talk like you, too-oo-oo…

Now, in the movie, King Louie had his own reasons for wanting to be like Mowgli. But I thought about this song when I read this ethereal text from 1855.

I thought of it because, as a follower of Jesus, there is nothing I want more than to be like Jesus. I want to walk (and live) in the way of Jesus; I want to talk (and love) in the way of Jesus. ‘I would gracious be;’ I want to live my whole life letting my words, my actions, my intentions be motivated and guided by the gift of love that has surrounded me from birth.

How will I live if I know that I am representing Jesus to the world? I want Jesus to speak through my life by my actions, bold in love and meek when honoring others. I want to show Jesus’ life in mine, through words that help and heal, in a world where words often tear down and injure, or where silence causes wounds of its own.

Gracious spirit, dwell with me, I would gracious be…

I wanna walk like you, talk like you, too…

...behind the mask

Will you love the “you” you hide if I but call your name?

Will you quell the fear inside and never be the same?

*

 Lord, Your summons echoes true when you but call my name.

Let me turn and follow you and never be the same.

In your company I’ll go where your love and footsteps show.

Thus I’ll move and live and grow in you and you in me.

--John L. Bell and Graham A Maule, 1987

Mardi Gras is a couple of weeks in our rear view mirrors, but I still come across strings of purple beads tucked between the cushions in my sofa, or under the seat of my Honda. I know for a fact I’m still working the Fat Tuesday pancakes off my hips (Shakira preached truth when she said “hips don’t lie”). And if you follow the Mardi Gras pageantry in New Orleans (or in Mobile, where Mardi Gras is even older), or even the Krewe de Tigris fun of a small-town Auburn Mardi Gras, you know that masks are a vital part of the revelry.

Masks allow us to pretend, to be someone or something other than who we are for a bit. They are pretense, misdirection, fantasy. Masks are fun or spooky, glamorous or mysterious.

But friends. When masks become our daily uniform, when we hide the reality of our lives--our truest joys and our deepest anguishes—from the world, and from ourselves, then our masks will be our undoing. Jesus calls us, by name, to repudiate fear’s power over us, the power that keeps us tied to the sameness of those masks. Jesus calls us, by name, to step out from behind the masks that are smothering us, to step into the uncovered truth of God’s love.

Out in the open, unmasked, there is moving, and living, and growing, in the company of Christ.