Essence. “the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character; the most significant element, quality, or aspect of a thing or person.”

If someone were to describe you, what is your most significant quality? What would be your “essence”?

I heard two different stories recently that made me wonder about this idea of essence and if that is something that transcends and stays with us even as we change.

Amy Grant tells a story she heard from her friend. This friend had a young twenty-something niece who died in a car accident. The niece was an avid letter writer, to the point that when her church was waiting for the youth pastor to arrive in the fall, the niece sent him letters throughout the summer describing the various kids and families to him as a “get to know” type of prep. Tragically, the niece died unexpectedly over Labor Day weekend and so never got to personally meet the youth pastor. However the youth pastor gave her eulogy because through those letters he had gotten to know her. The other quality of the niece was her reaction to music in church. She was one who could not just listen to hymns and church music and keep her hands in her lap. She had to raise her hands in the air even though she was the only one doing it in her staid, conservative church.

Years later the niece’s family received a letter from the fifty year old man who received the girl’s heart. He expressed his gratitude for his life gift from her and the family as well asked a couple of questions. He said that he was a simple man with a simple education and never had written a letter before in his life yet since receiving the heart he found he wrote letters all the time- to friends, children, grandchildren. He wanted to know if she wrote letters? Also, he wondered what she did in worship since he could not contain his arms during music, he would raise his hands in the air. Again, something that he would’ve never done before receiving the heart.

What was it about the essence of that girl that found its way into the memory of hers/now his heart?

I also heard a snippet of a rebroadcast of a radio show I had heard a while back (see blog post September 16, 2016 ) It was talking about the change of a caterpillar to butterfly, seemingly two different organisms. Is there something of the first, some essence, that embeds into the second?

The radio show gave the example of an experiment done at Georgetown University. Can moths remember what happened to them as caterpillars? The scientists took caterpillars and exposed them to a noxious gas- something that smelled awful- while giving them a little shock. They did this enough times that it created an aversion for the caterpillars to the smell. With another group of caterpillars, they did not do anything. Both sets of caterpillars went through the pupae stage- which dissolves their bodies and their brains- and emerged as moths. They then exposed both the two groups of moths to the same noxious smell. The moths who as caterpillars hadn’t been exposed to the smell weren’t affected but the group of moths who as caterpillars had been shocked with the smell, avoided the stench as moths. Seemed like something in their transformation remained in their memory.

Both stories made me think: what would remain about me if my surroundings changed? Would people recognize me from before? What is the essence of my character?

What about you? Do you feel that there is anything worth saving from “before”? What does the before and after look like for you? Sometimes it is a before/after of physical transformation- before/after weight gain or loss, before/after surgery, before/after illness. Sometimes it is a before/after religious experience- before/after becoming a Christian, Buddhist, Muslim. Sometimes it is a before/after behavioral lifestyle change- before/after quitting a harmful substance or addictive behavior. Or a before/after a situational change- before/after a death, marriage, birth.

Whatever the change might be, what makes you- you?

The psalmist declares that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. As we were knit in our mother’s womb, God knew all about us. He knows the very hairs on our head. If we are made in God’s image, I imagine that what remains, regardless of circumstances is our specific essence of God. Each one of us expresses an attribute of the total God (which is why we need community).

Perhaps when we are transformed by Him into what He intended for us from the beginning, we become more our authentic true self. We become a deeper, fuller expression of the essence of ourselves and part of the bigger, deeper and fuller expression of God.