Richard Rohr, OFM
“The kingdom will be partly strong and partly weak, and just as you see the iron and the clay mixed together, so the same two are mixed together in the seed of humanity.”
—The Book of Daniel, 2:42–43
Although the natural ways to answer the question “Who are you?” today are in psychological, chronological, ethnic, and career terms, these are not the ways that historic religion, storytellers, or mythology answered the question. The Great Tradition invariably sought to answer the question “Who are you?” ontologically, metaphysically, and objectively. It did not get lost in mere forms but looked for the Formless. It did not let us be defined by the superficial but only by substance, not by the passing but by the eternal. Earth was not enough to define us; we needed heaven. The hero defined human nature, not the pathological or the mere stages on the journey.
Such perennial wisdom levels the playing field. Further, it opens up that same field, because the foundation is now solid, unachieved, and given. It has a beginning, a tangent, and an end. It creates a basis for a human dignity that is universal and a basis for human rights that are not “granted” by anyone’s largesse.
The great religions would always somehow say we are “sons and daughters” of the very Godhead! Mythology would speak of us as having “noble birth,” with constant images of destiny, fate, and call. Storytellers took us on journeys of transformation, which are still the best movies and novels to this day. All of them placed us inside a world of inherent meaning and inherent mystery. We were safe inside of a cosmic egg. We were participants in a great drama and not just observers of our failures.
But now many of us live in a postmodern age, stuck in early stage critique—as if that were the goal! The sad price we pay is that we critique and hate ourselves—and one another—for our feet of clay instead of loving ourselves for our lovely feet of iron. Even Daniel the prophet says that we will be tempted to “split” since we do not know how to “blend”—but if we do blend, we will always “retain something of the strength of iron” (Daniel 2:41–43). That is who we are.
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