Who are You?

I’m standing by the wall, listening to the music. I’m at Showman’s, a staple jazz club in Harlem, New York. It’s Thursday night, the night of the tap jam. On Thursday nights at Showman’s tap dancers were welcome to sit in with the band. Joey Morant led the band, while David Gilmore hosted the dancers. The Copasetic’s LeRoy Myers stood at the end of the bar, his usual spot, overseeing the entire evening.

I’m standing by the wall when another tap dancer comes up to me and asks, “So, Andrew, are you a tap dancer or a hoofer?” Consider this analogous question: Are you a Christian or disciple of Jesus? In each case, the two terms mean the same thing. But they have come to mean different things to different people in different places. So now there is a hair to split, and a line to be drawn. Which one are you? The more general and commonly referenced, or the more specific, inside lingo, and intense?

To describe the number of thoughts that went through my mind at the posing of this question would take an immersion in tap dance history, the local New York tap dance community, and me revealing the tap dancer’s name – none of which I intend to do here. I share this anecdote only as an example of how charged the question of who we are can be.

The question of identity – how we describe who we are – has been at the heart of my journey. I talk about it and teach about it. Having grown up in a Lebanese family, in Canada and the United States, with feet in the commercial dance studio culture and the tap dance community, singular defining terms often used to describe identity never quite worked for me.

I’ve already shared about how labels are shortcuts to trust or distrust, a way to impose social pressure, and may not be as helpful as we think when it comes to change. This is especially true if we have decided to engage with our own spiritual formation journey. The focus of a journey of spiritual formation are the things that are changing, the context in which this change happens, and who we are with when changing, rather than the identities that we have held on to to know who we are. Along the journey, we will find that the labels are simply buckets, holding a number of characteristics, some of which we will want to retain, and some of which we will want to be rid of.

Instead of focusing on the labels (a function of history, lineage, or pursuit), we might focus on some other aspect of our lives to find out who we are. A fairly obvious one might our actions. If we turn our attention here, we have to contend with this statement: “You are what you do.” This holds a fair amount of truth in that our actions – whatever we do – bear witness to the inner world from which they come.

If our actions are one window into our inner life it would be good to have a way to visualize the connection between these visible actions and the landscape of our inner being. What I’ve found to be most helpful, I first discovered in Dallas Willard’s book, Renovation of the Heart. It is derived from a teaching of Jesus Christ found in the book of Matthew. I teach a more complete version of this in the Spiritual Formation for Artists Course and The Easy Yoke. It is the basis of how I think about my own spiritual formation and the clearest model I’ve found to visual the inner landscape of the person.

Here we go.

Consider a series of concentric circles. Each circle holds a particular aspect of the person. An action originates at the center of the circles and works itself through every part of the person before emerging in the physical world. We don’t have the same amount or kind of access to what is in every circle.

In the innermost circle is your spirit. Will or heart may be used as well. The three terms are effectively interchangeable. They all represent the same thing – the energy that initiates action. The direction of this initiating energy is described as desire – not in a negative or positive sense, but simply in a sense of wanting. In a profound sense, our actions are initiated in a direction towards our wants. Notably and most importantly, we do not have direct access to our spirit.

In the second circle is our mind. Here we find our thoughts and emotions. Thoughts and emotions are found together because they are profoundly linked. How we think affect our emotions, and our emotions often come with a few thoughts behind them. We do have direct access to our mind, which means that we can observe and engage directly in the manipulation of our thoughts and emotions. We can think about our thinking and begin to think differently. We can experiment here and in experimenting, we find one doorway into our inner world.

The third circle is our body. Our bodies are the mechanism by which our inner landscape becomes manifest in the physical world. Movement and language all express through our bodies. Our bodies also carry things. They carry the physical responses to past experiences. They carry the habitual activities that they have taken on over the years. Notable in this circle is the ability for an action to originate in the center of our person, skip our mind, and work its way to our body, in an instant. This is the beauty of the power of the body – to execute based on our organization without the requirement of conscious oversight.

The fourth circle is our soul. The soul is a profound part of the person, the topic of writing across the millennia. In this model the soul is also considered the wrapper. It is what holds all the parts of the person together. Notably, social relationships are found inside this circle – a visualization of the profound impact our social relationships have on the person we are.

From the center, then through each concentric circle, the energy which initiates an action navigates the inner landscape of the person before coming into physical reality – a witness of the landscape it has just traversed.

This landscape exists inside every one of us. In each of us, it has been formed in unique and particular ways. When we engage in our own spiritual formation, we accept an invitation to explore our inner landscape. This exploration is the stuff of adventure – harrowing, calling for bravery and endurance, full of wonder and challenge. This is the journey of spiritual formation.

When I say that spiritual formation is all about you, this is the you that I’m talking about.

On final thought. When we consider the journey of formation of a person it may be easy to get wrapped up in one aspect of the person. Maybe we lean too heavily on the the formation of our minds or bodies – aspects of our person to which we have more direct access. It is important to consider the person – your person – as a whole, when considering your journey. The model is here to provide a kind of map, with doors of entry for engagement and directions to find certain things. But the unit of measurement is the whole person. You are the whole you, not any singular part.