There is a wonderful moment that comes sometimes during the process of preparing for a funeral. I ask the family to tell me about the person who has died, and they usually start out by telling me her best qualities. And someone in the circle will pause, and smile, and say, "Well, she was certainly her own person..." and proceed to tell me some outlandish or maddening thing she liked to do. Then the deceased person suddenly feels alive again, like her spirit is right there in the room with us.
We are each blessed with a few people in our lives who are very much themselves, with unique personalities that delight us and drive us crazy. In my experience, these are some of our best teachers.
God's greatest desire, I believe, is for each of us to be whole. We were imprinted in creation with the glorious image of God, but each of our personalities can only express a small part of who God is. We encounter new aspects of God in each other, in the gifts that challenge or complement our own. If we let them, the people who are most different from us are the ones who can help our spirits stretch and open to whole new ways of knowing God.
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