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Spiritual reflection to start the day with Rev Richard Frazer of the Church of Scotland.

Good morning. We are fortunate to live in a little house by the sea. Every day we look across a beautiful bay and hear curlews with their haunting cry. We see oystercatchers busily foraging, and lines of plovers stand along the tide line like soldiers on parade. Gulls wheel on the air currents, clearly having fun, and through the summer months, sand martins and Ospreys add a touch of African exoticism to the scene. All these birds have their own distinctive character. They are truly themselves, dunlins expressing their dunlin natures.

When I think of what it is to be human, I realise that, unlike the birds, we often pretend to be what we are not. We put up defences for fear of being hurt. We reel from past trauma. For the birds, life is relatively simple. In spite of the song, no swan ever told a cygnet that she was not a swan.

The spiritual journey is a journey towards becoming. According to the Biblical tradition, we have an identity formed before we were knitted together in the womb. It can be a hard road to find our true selves with so much to undermine us along the way. According to Carl Jung, Jesus is the archetype of what it is to be human. When we seek to ‘imitate’ Christ, it is not so much about trying to be like him, but to find the personhood we share with his universal heart. We have the Divine nature deep within us. Setting that free enables us to be our true selves. The more aware we are of that inner spiritual depth that lies deep within, the less we will have to pretend to be someone we are not. That is the lesson I am learning from the birds.

Great love, set us free from the anxiety that leads to pretence. Help us to find deep within that we are loved, just as we are. May we grow day by day into our true likeness as people made in your image. Amen.