Identity transplant...

All of the Bible is trying to illustrate through various stories humanity’s objective unity with God.

What the biblical revelation is achieving is basically a very different consciousness, a recreated self, an "identity transplant" - just as today we talk about kidney and heart transplants. The text is inviting us slowly, little by little, into a very, very different sense of who we are.

We are not our own! Or as I tell the men at the initiation rites, "Your life is not about you." We move from the lesser self to the Great Self.

Saint Paul knew this well. He says, "I live now not my own life, but the life of Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). In the spiritual journey you come to the day where you know you’re not just living your own life. You realize that Someone Else is living in you and through you, that you are part of a much Bigger Mystery. You realize that you're a mere drop in a Bigger Ocean, and what's happening in the ocean is happening in you.

There is only one thing you must definitely know: "Who am I?" Or, restated, "Where do I abide?" If you can get that right, the rest largely takes care of itself. Paul answers it directly: "You are hidden with Christ in God, and he is your life" (Colossians 3:3-4).

Richard Rohr, from Things Hidden

I have to confess I think the NRSV translation of these two verses from Colossians (3.3-4) nails it for me. Quoting them in full: "for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory."