{"id":2093,"date":"2022-10-31T10:04:47","date_gmt":"2022-10-31T14:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2093"},"modified":"2022-10-31T10:05:31","modified_gmt":"2022-10-31T14:05:31","slug":"masks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/10\/31\/masks\/","title":{"rendered":"Masks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to this reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>.
 
It\u2019s that time of year again.
 
Why do<\/u><\/em> we break out scary masks every Halloween, pretending to be demons, vampires, ghouls, or one of the Kardashians?
 
The best guess of historians is that Halloween is the semi-Christianized version of an ancient Celtic festival on October 31-November 1 called Samhain (pronounced SAW-win<\/em>) which marked the beginning of winter.
 
Celtic lore suggested that during Samhain the boundary between the world of the living and the realm of the dead became unusually thin.  Apparitions from beyond the grave might therefore take nighttime strolls through the villages of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales.  This was assumed to be a direct threat to that village\u2019s hope for surviving the winter, and wasn\u2019t particularly good for tourism, either.
 
What defense could one mount against the walking dead?
 
The Druids, who represented the thoughtful domain of Celtic culture, taught that villagers might give them \u201ctreats\u201d of food.  Otherwise the spirits might play \u201ctricks\u201d on the living.
 
Then there was the mask option.  You could make yourself look scary and frighten the dead back to the grave.  Some Druids believed that donning a mask allowed the wearer to take on the attributes of the creature that was represented.
 
Which brings us to an entirely different kind of scary mask \u2013 the ones we sometimes wear to hide our true intentions.
 
The author of Proverbs 26:24-25 warned against the dangers of relational hide-and-seek: \u201cYour enemy shakes hands and greets you like an old friend, all the while conniving against you.  When he speaks warmly to you, don\u2019t believe him for a minute; he\u2019s just waiting for the chance to rip you off.\u201d  We should all be on guard against con artists.
 
But there is a much subtler way in which we wear masks in the company of others.  Sometimes we even conceal our motives from ourselves.
 
I may display a smile that says \u201cyes,\u201d and speak encouraging words concerning the ideas you just presented.  But what I\u2019m really doing is avoiding a difficult conversation.  I don\u2019t want to face the discomfort of telling you, to your face, what I\u2019m really thinking and feeling.  So I resort to a cover-up, assuming I can always figure out a behind-the-scenes way to make sure my views prevail.
 
This is an all-too-common crisis of authenticity.  And there\u2019s a lot at stake. 
 
When all is said and done, neighbors, family members, and team members can only walk with each other if there is shared trust \u2013 an implicit confidence that our cards are on the table for all to see.  Trust is founded on the expectation that our Yes means Yes and our No means No.
 
As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, \u201cAnd don\u2019t say anything you don\u2019t mean\u2026 You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, \u2018I\u2019ll pray for you,\u2019 and never doing it, or saying, \u2018God be with you,\u2019 and not meaning it. You don\u2019t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say \u2018yes\u2019 and \u2018no.\u2019 When you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong\u201d (Matthew 5:33-37, The Message<\/em>). 
 
So what can we do? 
 
Ask God for the grace and the power to drop your mask.
 
Tell the truth \u2013 mean what you say \u2013 and leave it at that.
 
For those around you, that will turn out to be the ultimate Halloween treat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. It\u2019s that time of year again. Why do we break out scary masks every Halloween, pretending to be demons, vampires, ghouls, or one of the Kardashians? The best guess of historians is that Halloween is the semi-Christianized version of an ancient Celtic festival on October 31-November 1 called Samhain (pronounced SAW-win) which marked the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[37,526],"class_list":["post-2093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-authenticity","tag-honesty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2093"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2096,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093\/revisions\/2096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}