"In that short story her main character, Ruby Turpin, a good but righteous Christian, has a vision as she stands in a pigpen. Ruby is a classic Christian False Self, who finally looks out and beyond her self-made holiness (her "pigpen") to her first glimpse of her True Self. In the story she describes what she sees as a "vast horde of souls" rumbling toward heaven: poor whites, black people in white robes, and "battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs." Bringing up the rear, she says, is a "tribe of people like her" who "had always had a little of everything" and were marching "behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they always had been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior ... Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away." There it is, as only a master teacher can teach it. O'Connor presents the False Self in its final shattering moments. One only hopes that Ruby can surrender and begin to sing "off-key" like the rumbling hordes. She has suffered from a massive case of mistaken identity all her life, just as we all do, but hers was bolstered by a strong "Christian" False Self. Religion can significantly delay the emergence of our True Self. I have been a Priest for forty-two years and can say that from solid experience.
The True Self does not really "go to heaven" as much as live there already. It is indeed part of the "vast horde rumbling toward heaven". It lives in the big Body now, puts little trust in its private virtue, and feels no undue surprise at its personal weakness. Ruby is just opening up to heaven for the first time, and she is a little shocked and surely disappointed that so many "others" are there." end of Rohr quote.
And...
If you want another approach to "mistaken identity" from The Gospel of Thomas - with a wonderful personal reflection and photo by Blogger Diane Walker - click here. Hint - click on the reflection/photo for a larger, easier to read view.
