Not Separate, But One

A Funeral’s Hidden Lesson on Personhood

A woman once told me that it was during her father’s funeral that she first understood what the meaning of the word ‘person’ might mean. Not because of what was said about him (though the eulogies were warm), but because of how the gathering felt, the atmosphere in which the words were spoken.

‘As I looked around,’ she said, ‘I could see what his love had meant to people. That love wasn’t gone. It was like some of him had poured into them, and was still present. Everyone there and my Dad had become more real, together.’

What she shared became very real for me a few weeks ago at my father’s funeral. My strongest memory of the day is a deep sense of everyone there, and all who have passed, being intimately bound together – all present. You might have had a similar experience.

Beyond the Illusion of the Separate Self

Western thought has for too long identified what it is to be a person with the idea of an individual life, that we are (to one degree or another) autonomous, self-contained, separate. But there is an older, truer, more beautiful wisdom. This wisdom knows that personhood is not a separate possession, an identity built on the fragile scaffolding of I and you, mine and yours, but a mystery of relationship. In this time of conflict and division in the world, this way of seeing, this theology, this way of experiencing our life, matters more than ever.

The Communion-Bearing Person

There is a kind of person who no longer lives only from the surface of things, but from the depths. One who has learned to see beyond their thoughts, beyond all that they had thought (or been told) about themselves. And who emerges, not dissolved, but widened. Opened out. Like a chalice. Open to those around them. Open and responsive to the suffering of the world. Christian teachers have called such a one the communion-bearing person. Not a separate self, but a being-in-relation, whose life has become prayer, love in relationship.

The Shape of the Cross: Wisdom and Love United

It is a life lived in the shape of the cross. The vertical of the cross is wisdom, the knowledge of God, of the oneness of being. The horizontal of the cross is love, radiating out from the centre in compassion for all. At the centre, in the union of wisdom and compassion, the person is born. Not through self-assertion, but through self-emptying, the kenosis of which St. Paul speaks – not diminishment or any sort of loss, but glory, the shining-forth of what has always been true, the light of divine love bodying-forth in human life. In the words of the great second century teacher Irenaeus, ‘The glory of God is the human person fully alive.’ It is the grace by which we begin to live, not just for ourselves, but for one another. To bear one another, to pray for one another, to contain all.

The Heart as a Sanctuary for All

The heart of the one who loves in this way becomes increasingly open, spacious, encompassing – a sanctuary for all beings. The world lives in them, as they live in the world. They have become Christ’s great prayer of oneness:

A person living from this awareness does not merely pray for others with words. They have become living intercession, a place of peace, a place of love. Their life has become a living icon of the One who holds all things in a single embrace.

Oneness as the True Calling of the Human Person

This is personhood. A paradox for contemporary culture, it radiates a profound challenge for many who hold power in our world.

We do not become persons through individualism, but in communion. Not through accumulating, but through divesting. Not through seeking to possess, but through offering. Not through self-centredness, but through self-forgetfulness. We come into life through giving our life away, offering the love that is the deepest truth of who we are.