The pungent odor of honest truth

"Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid."
---The Book of Common Prayer

"When you finally smell yourself, it means others have been smelling you for sometime."
---Conventional wisdom from one of the shelter residents

I have always thought it a bit strange that really large men are often the ones called things like Junior, Little John or Tiny. The large fellow who stood in front of me bore such a oxymoronic misnomer on the streets around the shelter. He was wearing relapse all over his face and his large eyes were impossible to miss. He had walked past me and voluntarily blurted out, “I have not been using drugs. I’m straight. I’m straight.” I moved on over to where he was standing because I knew one thing that worked better than any drug test with this giant of a man. I looked him in the eyes and asked, “What do you think about the world these days?” He looked at me like he was about to explode. He mouth trembled and he finally yelled out, “Chaos, chaos, it’s all madness!!” His shoulders slumped. He looked like he just realized that he had confessed to murder. You see, he tends to get paranoid about society and government conspiracies when he is all geeked up. He just cannot help seeing the black helicopters-style conspiracy connections leading to a fiery Waco-like end of the social order when he is under the influence.

When my children were very little, my oldest son Andy would often toddle through the house and shake his head while saying, “No, no, no, no…” We knew to follow him because that meant he was on his way to kill his baby brother or some other terrible offense. He was thinking about doing a “No-no” on his way to the deed. Of course, I am really not much better. After nearly twenty years together, my wife can read me like a coffee table book!

I think we often reveal more about ourselves than we ever realize. The only person that we successfully hide the truth from is the person we see in the mirror every morning. For years I was a closet Episcopalian. Like Nicodemus who came to Jesus at night under the cover of darkness, I used to sneak into our local Episcopal church looking over my shoulder. When I finally “came out” and told everyone that I was on the road to Canterbury, I was the only one who was really shocked. I was shocked by how anticlimactic my “stunning revelation” was to the people who knew me. I was surprised by the fact that it seemed to make sense to all of the closest people in my life---including my coworkers. It turned out that many people had observed me sneaking into that church. One person told me, “I knew years ago that you would end up being an Episcopalian.” By the time the truth finally catches up with us, others have often seen it in pursuit for a long time.

Our actions to those who are different or powerless often reveal more about us than we care to admit. Because so many of the people who come to the shelter work in food service, I am always keenly aware of how the people I am with when I am eatng out treat the serving staff in restaurants. When I see people who abuse the marginalized, especially those who use the Scriptures to do so, I understand more about their wounded souls than they could possibly imagine. They are revealing things about themselves that they may not fully be aware of yet.

The Collect for Purity at the top of this post says that nothing is hidden from God. (By the way, if you can finish the rest of that collect from memory, then you might also be revealing yourself to be an Episcopalian.) Of course, when we ask God to reveal to us that which we cannot see about ourselves, we have to be prepared for the answer to come from others who have been seeing the truth for a long time. That is one of the benefits of being in community with others who have our best interests at heart. If I have to be the last to know the truth about myself, I sure want to hear it from a friend who can break it to me gently. I have discovered that it always pays to have someone who can be a gentle prophetic voice of truth to us in our lives. So I ask you dear reader, just like I do so many of the people I work with in our programs, who pays attention to your life? Who has been “smelling” you for a long time and knows what is really beneath the deodorizing narratives that you wear? Have you gathered voices around you that will tell you your secrets or sell your own propaganda back to you as the price of friendship?