Whose am I?

You can’t be a person by yourself.
By Victoria Safford
Fall 2008 8.18.08

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RELATED RESOURCES

Remind Us Again, Brave Friends. Victoria Safford's 2008 Service of the Living Tradition sermon. (UUA.org; pdf)

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Douglas Steere, a Quaker teacher, says that the ancient question, “Who am I?” inevitably leads to a deeper one, “Whose am I?”—because there is no identity outside of relationship. You can’t be a person by yourself. To ask “Whose am I?” is to extend the question far beyond the little self-absorbed self, and wonder: Who needs you? Who loves you? To whom are you accountable? To whom do you answer? Whose life is altered by your choices? With whose life, whose lives, is your own all bound up, inextricably, in obvious or invisible ways?

Excerpted from "Remind Us Again, Brave Friends," Victoria Safford's sermon at the 2008 General Assembly Service of the Living Tradition. See sidebar for a link to the complete text.