Dealing with multiple personalities

I suffered from multiple personality disorder this week, my differing personalities vying for pre-eminence, with the lead personality changing with each tick of the clock.

I've been sick. I think with the flu, since there was fever, body aches and a cough that will likely linger through the next holiday. At its worst, it felt like I'd been hit by a MAC truck and even walking across the room left me feeling as weak as a kitten, which helps explain why I was so vulnerable to the changing and changeable personalities.

The first personality to emerge was the "dutiful employee." I am seldom sick and take great pride in "soldiering on" through summer colds and other less than notable illnesses. My attendance record for more than 12 years is spotted only by the births of my grandchildren and the illnesses or deaths of loved ones -- until now. But as hard as I tried to convince myself that I wasn't "that sick" the sicker I felt and I was compelled to call in.

It was hard. My first serious job was at Diner's Club many years ago. My boss in the authorization program warned me way back then not to ever get the idea that I was indispensable. And I'm not. But when Bruce Crosby hired me more than 12 years ago, he said, "I don't care if you're the greatest writer who ever lived, if you're not here, you're not doing me any good." I took him at his word as well, and have done my best to be here, especially since I'm not the greatest writer that ever lived.

Once the decision, and the necessary phone call, was made, I settled in with the steamer, fever reducers and liquids, following the best medical advice, to get plenty of rest and drink lots of fluids. Out came the helpless little kitten personality, happy to let Danny adjust my pillow, keep the steamer running and brew the tea. And that's where I stayed, with BooBoo kitty likely as not adding another layer of warmth snuggling next to me. (It's not me he wanted to be close to, it's the couch quilt. He loves that blanket and when it's out, he's on it.)

Trapped, I was forced to endure hour after hour of daytime television, complete with Christmas commercials bisecting the less than entertaining programs at frequent intervals.

What an interesting, and complex, world we live in. America is unique in so many ways in the history of the world. A nation of immigrants, we have somehow formed a union that shouldn't be possible, melding, sometimes through great strife and even warfare, innumerable customs and traditions, each somehow revealed in those unending Christmas commercials.

In fact, many of our Christmas traditions today come from an amalgamation of traditions brought by the very immigrants that formed us and form us still.

Once upon a time, a people's identity was found in their national heritage. Germans were German, with distinct cultural and religious mores that formed what it meant to be German. Same with the Scots, the English, the Irish, the Spanish, and the Romans and any nation you can remember or name. Each of these cultures preferred their own and for most of history citizens remained within 200 if not 20 miles of the place of their birth, never engaging nor encountering a people different from themselves.

In today's America, nothing could be farther from the truth. True, early immigrants forged out communities within communities, with people of one nation or another largely gathering in one section or another. However, by the time I was born, all that had changed and America was on the move. I not only lived in many parts of the country in my early childhood, my personal heritage was an amalgamation of many countries -- English, Swedish, Cherokee, Spanish and who knows what else. I am, to put it nicely, a "Heinz-57 American."

This unique condition, the challenge of homogenizing many peoples into one, is similar, I think, to the challenges faced by Christianity at the outset, challenges it faces yet today.

Jesus came to the Jewish nation. But he also came to the world, with the angel's proclamation "I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people..." (Luke 2:10) and his own proclamation, "For God so loved the world..." (John 3:16) and Paul's unique commission, revealed by the Lord to Ananias, "This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles...." (Acts 9:15)

Early Jewish believers faced unique challenges when Gentile believers joined the family of God, bringing with them facets of their own national identities, unschooled in the traditions of Judaism. This conjoining of different traditions caused no small difficulty, with the leaders of the day wrestling with the enormous challenges of setting aside the unknown and certainly strange traditions of men to accept them into the Kingdom of God as followers of Jesus Christ. The challenge remains and offers some explanation as to the many and varied traditions within traditions found in Christianity to this day.

For some believers, no day, other than Easter, is holier than Christmas, both as it happens, pagan holidays co-opted for Christ centuries ago. For other believers, it is no different than any other day of the year and for still others, its very origins taint it, making it an offense. And with the current culture's penchant for self-indulgence at any cost, it is hard to see that Jesus would even want his name associated with this display of rampant consumerism, inflicting stress, anxiety, worry, greed and even despair on those who seek to keep the traditions alive.

Paul faced similar challenges with Rome and all of the nations and traditions it had absorbed through its conquests of many nations. His advice to the Romans is as sound today as it was when he penned it, "One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord." (Romans 14:5, 6)

In spite of my recent bout with multiple personality disorder I am who I have always been, who I have become as a follower of Jesus, a child of God.

And so, to all who have become children of God through Jesus, his Son, regardless of tradition or heritage, I say, with Paul:

"So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." I Corinthians 10:31