For Christmas, and in honor of this website, a dear friend gave me a collage print she’d created and framed. The collage has the name of this website, “Still Forming,” at the top, formed from letters cut out of magazines, with a huge white gardenia and golden leaf nestled in the center. In the bottom left corner of the collage, she pasted the words of a poem we both recently discovered. It’s a poem that speaks to the spirit of this site, about how we are not yet what we will one day be.

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I Am Not I by Juan Ramon Jimenez

I am not I.
          I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.

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When I read this poem, I tend to think that the one “walking beside me whom I do not see” is Jesus. It is, after all, his image we are being conformed into, his image we will one day be. And I think it is true that he walks beside us, remaining calm and silent while we talk, forgiving us gently when we hate, and will remain standing for us when we die.

And sometimes when I read this poem, the one “walking beside me whom I do not see” is the person I will one day really be, the person I am slowly becoming in this life, the Christianne that is the truest manifestation of herself, the purified and holy and fully loving me, the Christianne God intended me to be when he spoke me into existence. That “I,” the true “I,” is slowly becoming more and more like Jesus, someone who is calm and gentle and forgiving and loving, who is brave and willing to walk where I am currently afraid to walk, who will stand before God in the end, unblinking and full of love.