The Self behind the Self, Concealed
Ourself, behind ourself, concealed –
Should startle most –
EMILY DICKINSON
John Purnell turned to me with a puzzled look on his face. I could tell that he wasn’t quite sure what he should say next.
“What I’m trying to say, honestly—and I don’t know any other way of putting this—is that I think that inside you’re a very different person from the one everybody sees.” John raised his bushy eyebrows, clearly concerned about how I would take such a declaration.
“I mean,” he said, as if to clarify, “the person I’m seeing as I get to know you just doesn’t match up with the one you show to the world. You know what I mean?”
I sat in silence, suddenly feeling small.
“It’s so strange, Steve. I’ve been wanting to say this for the past couple of months.”
We were sitting across from one another in John’s office, exploring a friendship that was still quite new. I felt exposed. Off balance. Dizzy, even. He thinks I’m a fake? Could he really say those kinds of things to me? Did he know me well enough?
I learned later, as this same feeling of extreme vulnerability repeated itself over and over again in my friendship with John, that this discomfort signaled something important. Here’s the lesson that John’s truth telling finally led me to understand: if being seen in some new depth disorganizes your mind temporarily, makes you feel crazy or struck dumb, well, then you know you’ve hit important new psychological pay dirt.
2
Do you ever wonder what you look like to your friends?
What are the deepest truths about you that these friends withhold from you—withhold perhaps because they’re too personal, or too frightening, to say out loud? You must not be told, they think. It would hurt you. It would destroy you.
Nonetheless, wouldn’t you like to know what they see?
Do you ever wonder what you look like to a stranger? What does the server see when she brings you your coffee and bagel on a regular basis at the corner cafe? What does she see in your behavior of which you are entirely unaware?
Every now and then through the course of life, someone shows up who sees us, who seems, indeed, to have X-ray vision for our psyches. Who seems to have stumbled onto our precise frequency. This is rare. But rarer still is the friend who feels brave enough, engaged enough, safe enough, to share what they see.
This is the story of one such friendship. This is a story of The Mirror.
3
The story begins when I was twenty-eight years old.
My uncle had died suddenly of a heart attack at the tender age of fifty-six. Not just any old uncle. It was my favorite uncle, William VanDemark Crothers—Uncle Bill, my mother’s only brother. One minute he was sailing his small blue boat on Lake Ontario, chuckling at the ham-handed seventeen-year-old nephew handling the sail. The next moment he was clutching his chest.
Within a few days we were burying him—my handsome, fun-loving uncle, who had played trumpet in the Navy jazz band, could steer a car with his knees, and had taught us kids to whistle with our fingers.
After the funeral, I dragged myself home to my newly purchased house in Boston, the “triple-decker” I had just bought with David, my then-partner of four years, in the tough Irish neighborhood called Dorchester.
The Sunday after I got home, still needing to grieve, I donned the funeral suit again and found my way to the local Episcopal church, an imposing American-gothic landmark called All Saints’ Church, Ashmont. As I’ve said, David and I had just moved to this particular ’hood, so I hadn’t yet had time to check out the church. Seeing it, though, had already been on my to-do list. It was, according to a snooty Harvard friend of mine, a pillar of “high Anglican fervor” in the middle of our Irish, working-class neighborhood.
The church more than lived up to my friend’s description. It was gothic, indeed. Soaring, both outside and in. The sanctuary was all stone and polished wood, gold leaf and silver chalices—quiet and still but for the soft reverie of the organ, preparing the spotty congregation for the high mass. It was dark, and that suited me. I sat in a little pew next to a pillar in the back of the sanctuary. It felt safe and warm. I knelt down on the red-leather kneeler at my feet and closed my eyes.
The service began with the words I knew well: “Almighty God unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid . . .” I made the sign of the cross out of habit, and bowed my head. I felt remarkably at home. I had a surprising, but welcome, moment of relief. It was almost physical, as if I had deeply exhaled some great burden. For a moment, I was at ease. (Perhaps this is how the castaway feels when he is at last rescued. Or when he first pulls himself up onto the welcome sands of the beach. Saved.)
The priest continued: “Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy holy spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name.”
Unexpectedly, I exploded into sobs.
I cried uncontrollably, even wildly, tears soaking the red prayer book in my hands. Down on my knees again after the opening sentences, I grasped the pew in front of me as if for dear life. My tweedy neighbors to the right looked at each other, alarmed. This was not how my Episcopal tribe did church. I put my head down on the dark wooden pew in front of me and shook. Deep belly sobs erupted periodically throughout the service.
When the whole thing was done, when the procession, the choir, and the cross had made their final trek down the main aisle, I knelt for a while longer as clouds of incense hung around the timbered ceiling and infused my nostrils with an acrid scent. I can’t handle the receiving line, I thought. Everyone would be way too happy, in that churchy sort of way. I slipped out a side door into the May sunshine. The sun was warm on my skin, and the fragrance of apple blossoms infused the air. I felt at peace for the first time in two weeks.
But not for long.
This scene would repeat itself over and over again every Sunday morning for the next two months. I kid you not. The same scene, exactly. I’m back in the same pew at All Saints, dressed in the same funeral suit. The priest has begun: “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open . . .” Bam! Let the sobbing begin.
It did not stop there: Grief bled into my whole life. I fell asleep at my desk at work. I drank too much—cheap wine, directly from a gallon jug. I laughed uncontrollably at inappropriate times. I sat on the roof of our triple-decker home in Dorchester (two twenty-something WASP gay boys “gentrifying,” as we thought—though for the most part the “gentry” never came—this tough Irish neighborhood) and stared across the rooftops of a thousand other triple-deckers to the Atlantic Ocean.
I was acting out my grief everywhere. But church? Church was where I actually cried.
4
It turns out that my regular Sunday morning sob fest did not go unobserved.
The rector of the church—the priest who said the words Sunday after Sunday—had taken note. The Reverend John Ritchie Purnell (his name was on the sign in front of the church) had observed me. I later found out that he had been aware of me even on that very first Sunday.
But how? Hadn’t I hidden behind a pillar?
I had no idea who this Father Purnell—this tuned-in guy—was.
Well, as it happens, he was someone. An ecclesiastical superstar, in fact.
John Ritchie Purnell was one of the greatest Anglo-Catholic priests of his generation. One of his closest friends, a fellow priest, described him perfectly: “He was six feet three, weighed between 250 pounds up to what he called his ‘fighting weight’ at 280, had a brilliant mind for doctrine, a sidesplitting wit, and above all an enormous overflowing heart for Christ’s poor. He had some family wealth, but he preferred to live and serve in his beloved ‘down-at-the-heel’ cities.”
Just so. As I have said, when I met him, Father Purnell was quietly presiding over the Parish of All Saints in my very own poor neighborhood of Boston. Purnell was a handsome, imposing man, with neatly cut salt-and-pepper hair; a round, intelligent face; and big, black glasses. He was always dressed in full High Church regalia—black cassock or suit, Roman collar, black cape, and biretta. On liturgical occasions he appeared in richly colored silk stoles and albs that you might expect to see in an ancient Eastern Orthodox church. (At twenty-eight, I didn’t know the name for most parts of this exotic costume—having grown up in the Presbyterian Church, where ministers dressed in a plain black robe any run-of-the mill high school choir member might wear.)
Over the weeks I picked up gossip about Purnell in the neighborhood. Apparently, he was a force of nature in the highbrow world of Anglo-Catholicism. He was Harvard trained, scripturally learned, and razor sharp. Stories about his powerful doctrinal convictions abounded. And everyone—from lordly bishops to the lowliest curates—knew that one only crossed doctrinal swords with John Purnell at one’s peril. (Doctrinal swords? Well, there were apparently heated doctrinal battles between so-called “high Episcopalians” or Anglo-Catholics, and “low Episcopalians”—battles that I did not, at that time, understand at all. Purnell was a High Churchman and an Anglo-Catholic of considerable renown.)
Father Purnell later told me that one Low Church priest who had tangled with him over doctrine—and inevitably lost—had sputtered back in frustration, “Purnell, you are . . . you are . . . well . . . you’re just too big, you’re too black [referring to his traditional black garb], and you’re too Catholic.”
John Ritchie Purnell preached without notes, holding the wooden lectern with both hands and leaning toward the congregation. His sermons were impeccably organized, which was a mystery to me since they seemed to be completely spontaneous. I later discovered that they were not spontaneous at all. During the week, he drove around Boston in his old Toyota wagon, rehearsing his sermon, and preaching to the traffic on the Southeast Expressway.
What I soon discovered was that this too-big, too-Catholic man had the tenderest of hearts. His sermons were saturated with New Testament love and grace: We’re okay just as we are. We’re loved—no matter what shits we are in daily life. We’re accepted. Forgiven. Embraced by God’s love. We’re already perfect. (Scripture said it: “In our true nature we are adorned like any lily of the field.”) Purnell talked often about his own need for grace, for forgiveness, for comfort, for guidance, for God.
It was extremely affecting—this big, bold, smart man talking with such disarming humility. In my family—in my Presbyterian church of origin—we did not even imagine hanging our hearts out like that. Surely it was against some unwritten code of church etiquette and restraint?
Every Sunday I felt bathed by Father Purnell’s accepting words. Embraced, almost. This man, so solid, so powerful, seemed, strangely, to be as broken on the inside as I was. (He would later tell me, without shame, “Every Christian has a broken heart.”)
One Sunday morning, after two months of flying solo in my tear-stained pew, I tentatively emerged from behind the pillar and joined the throng at coffee hour after the service. Why not have a lemon square?
I was a fish out of water in the big Tudor hall. But within five minutes, Father Purnell himself spied me and made a beeline in my direction. Smiling, he reached out his hand. “Good morning, mystery man.”
Why do I always think I’m invisible?
Father Purnell invited me to have coffee “one day soon,” and pulled a calendar and little pencil out of his back pocket. He looked at me expectantly.
My first meeting with Father Purnell took place in his private study in the church rectory, which stood across the street from—and magisterially overlooked—the church itself. The house was a strange combination of grandeur and simplicity, an imposing Georgian manse with large, paneled rooms; lots of leaded glass; and a grand staircase. The furnishings were spare: a black-leather sofa here, a non-matching chair there, an old stereo set with a pile of records, mismatched crocheted throws. It looked a little like someone was camping out—though in the most orderly fashion.
The study was the only well-lived-in room in the house. It was dark, like the church. Heavy. Solemn. It was sheathed in oak paneling and books, and was replete with brown and red leather. Leaded-glass windows framed an imposing fireplace. It was also inhabited by two large, black Belgian sheepdogs, and I wasn’t at all sure they liked me—or anybody. There was in this room a sense of holy secrets, as if a hundred years of parishioners’ confessions and priestly absolutions had sanctified the very air we breathed.
As I sat in the red-leather chair across from Father Purnell, I was intrigued. Who was this guy? In person, he had a warm, engaged, and at times sparkling presence. We began on safe territory: the current state of the Episcopal Church. What’s your view of women’s ordination? Gay people in the church? High Church versus Low? We were eyeing each other. Testing the waters.
I got an invitation to return the next Saturday.
6
Soon after that, Father Purnell—within weeks it was just “John”—and I adopted a rhythm. We met regularly at 11 on Saturday mornings. By that time he had already spent a couple of hours thinking about his sermon for the next day, and perhaps preaching it to the dogs (a tough crowd). Then I would drop by for tea. We would spend an hour or two talking. Sometimes we took the dogs for a walk around the neighborhood.
As the months passed, John and I had a growing sense that we knew each other. That we recognized one another. It was strange—as if we had known one another all along. (What is the saying? A brother from another mother?) There were present in our burgeoning relationship some of the early qualities of twinship—attunement, alignment, tracking. But there was something else. Something entirely new.
I would only understand it much later. This new quality might be called “recognition.”
Recognition! This is the first characteristic of a mirroring relationship. This recognition can be immediate. (Love at first sight is, of course, a kind of recognition.) Or this recognition can grow slowly over the months and years.
Recognition. For some mysterious reason, you see deeply into a person. You know them. You understand them. Like you accidentally got tuned-in to the very same channel on the shortwave radio, a channel almost no one else can receive. But you receive it full out: I see you! Wow.
We have talked about the central psychological mechanism of containment: “feeling felt.” This “being recognized” is similar in some ways to feeling felt, but also adds some entirely new components. To be as precise as I can about this, I would say that rather than feeling felt, it is an experience of “being seen.” Being seen.
I now understand, by the way, that this is exactly what had happened to E. M. Forster when he encountered the shepherd boy. Forster saw the shepherd. I mean: He recognized him. He understood him. He recognized the layers of meaning that that young man bore in his very being. Had this boy ever been seen—recognized—in such a comprehensive, soul-searching way before? I doubt it. Was the boy even aware of having been recognized?
Tibetan lamas, when they are reborn, live in obscurity—in obscurity, that is, until that day when someone recognizes them. That is the very word they use: recognize. Oh! I know who you are. The person who does the recognizing (usually another awakened being) understands the reincarnated lama’s entire history. He sees their full story. He knows who they are.
Is there anyone in your life just now for whom you have this kind of recognition? Whom you see with alarming clarity? And have you noticed what comes along with this vivid recognition? Well, what comes with it, of course, is a desire for contact. Psychologists call this “the impulse to approach.” Forster went back again and again trying to find the shepherd boy, though he never did. What did I just see? Forster certainly must have wondered. Is there more? Who is this remarkable person?
For John and me (and of course I see this only with the perspective of decades) this factor of recognition was almost immediate. It frightened me a little. How very scary it is to be seen. I remember how tight my belly was in those early encounters in the study with John, how anxious I felt to impress him—to rise to him, and meet him on his own ground. And yet how exhilarated I felt afterward, and how compelled I felt to seek out more. (The impulse to approach!)
7
Here, then, are the inevitable questions: Who sees you? Who can you see? And just as importantly: what do you do with what you see?
I have a relationship with my talented twenty-eight-year-old niece, Catherine. She does not yet see herself in all her innate sweetness, genius, and nobility. But I see her. I recognize her. I see her many gifts.
You’ve probably had this experience. So, here’s the question. When you see someone, as I do Catherine, what do you do with this recognition? Do you act on it? Do you feel compelled, as I do with Catherine, to mirror her back to herself? Do you feel compelled to speak? Or are you struck dumb?
Old Testament prophets were given the gift of seeing—of recognition. Indeed, they were sometimes called Seers. Perhaps they could see God, or at least hear him. Perhaps they could see truth. These Seers were told in no uncertain terms that along with the gift of seeing went a responsibility. A responsibility to the seen. A responsibility to speak what was seen. To reflect back the recognition.
And what did these prophets, these Seers, do? Well, actually, many of them took the first boat out of town. The responsibility of seeing and speaking was just too much. (“A prophet is only without honor in his own land,” observe the scriptures quite astutely, warning of the danger of speaking the difficult truth quite as loudly as a prophet must.) “I’m out of here,” many of these newly appointed Seers must have thought. The prophet Jonah was one such runaway Seer, and we know what happened to him: his “first boat out of town” hit a storm, sank, and a great whale swallowed the AWOL prophet and forced him back to his duty.
John Ritchie Purnell was forty-four at the time we met (I’m shocked to think now how young he was, for I remember then thinking of him as an old man). I was twenty-eight. We had recognized one another. Now what? Well, after six months, we had worked our way up to the dialogue with which I opened this chapter. But that conversation actually went much deeper than the one I described at the beginning of this chapter.
After we got into the topic, John had said, “I watched you at lunch with your parents last week. I was really surprised, Steve, at the way they talked to you. As if they don’t know the person I know at all.
“And not only that. I found your parents to be so different than you had described them. I couldn’t believe it.
“This is so confusing to me,” John went on. “Because the story you tell about your life just doesn’t fit together.” He had met the players. He had listened to my tale about my life. He had gotten to know me pretty well. He was confused by the discrepancies.
I tried to breathe and take all of this in. But I could feel my hands clenching the arms of the chair. I felt hot.
John continued. “First of all, you’ve really idealized your parents in the telling. Second, and this is what really bugs me, you don’t seem to understand your own strengths.” He was on a roll now, and plowed ahead. “Not only that, but the story changes from day to day. There is just simply a big gap between the person I see and who you seem to think you are.”
John could see that I was undone. “Forgive me, Steve, but friends really have to tell each other these things. Hard as they are.”
Then came the dizzy feeling upon which I’ve already commented. (This, by the way, is the very common experience of shame in being seen. Adam and Eve were seen naked in the garden of Eden—and, as the scriptures said, simply, “they were ashamed.”)
As it turns out, John had understood and unmasked for me a problem for which we now have a name—a wonderful, technical, clinical name. We now call this phenomenon “autobiographical incoherence.”