Iceberg

Ever seen an iceberg? I haven’t in real life but I understand that what you see above the surface of the water is only 10% of the actual iceberg.

The titanic sank because it collided with a section of the submerged 90% of the iceberg.

The stuff you can’t see.

I think our lives are like icebergs. What you and I see is only the 10%. What we miss is the 90%.

Pete Scazzero says, “The weightier portions of the ice are beneath the surface, but they so often dominate the visible.”

The late Dag Hammerarskjold , once the secretary general of the United Nations suggested that we have become adept at exploring outer space, but have never developed similar skills in exploring our own personal inner spaces.

He wrote, “The longest journey of any person is the journey inward.”

Pete Scazzero makes this comment. “Most of us feel way more equipped at manipulating objects, controlling situations and doing things than what it takes to take that very long journey inward.”

Scary to think what might be under the surface. Even if we have already begun that journey inward. What still might be lurking underneath?

Maybe one our greatest fears is what will we find.

Thomas Murton describes what we so often do in order to hide.

“I love to clothe this false self…and I wind experiences around myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself visible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface. But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed. I am hallow…and when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness.”

That’s it isn’t it?

What if we let God strip us of all the wrappings, all that makes us look good on the surface, and all we find underneath is naked, empty and hollow.

I wonder what lies underneath all our business, driveness, hurriedness?