I have had the honor of reviewing June Maffin’s upcoming book, Soulistry, which you should run out and pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, or whatever bookseller you favor. It is a guide to creating a moving inner screen, so to speak, of your soul’s life.
As I worked through the book, I thought about my own journal, which is this blog. Since St. John’s Day 2007, I have called it “BishopBlogging.” But it really isn’t about a bishop so much as it is my own inner life—at least the part I am willing to share publicly. (Of course, is anything really private anymore?)
Soulistry is one guide — a very good guide — among many to finding out who you are. “To thine own self be true” is a famous quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius sermonising his son Laertes in Act I, scene 3. In Elizabethan English it meant not “tell yourself the truth about yourself” as often rendered today. It meant, in American slang, “always look out for Number One.” A little play on words, which Google cannot find, occurred to me as I read June’s MS: “to thine own true self, be.”
Finding out who you are at this moment in time and space is critically important to everything else in life. So from now on this will be the title of my blog. And I hope, Gentle Reader, that you will continue to find in this virtual place some pleasure in reading, as one man, who just happens to be a bishop, tries to find a little bit of truth and just be. You know… Être. Sein. Esse. Ser (or is it Estar?). είναι. In any language, just be. Right now. Tomorrow, we’ll see.
{Bishop Pierre Whalon’s blog “To Thine Own True Self, Be” July 3, 2010}