Are We All Dulcinea??

I love Broadway plays!!!! I was in theater all through high school and acted in several great plays. Luckily my theater teacher had worked as a director on off- Broadway and really knew how to put on a first-rate production. I played Officer Krupke in West Side Story, a crazy person in Cuckoo's Nest, and was also in Man of La Mancha. If you have never seen this play you are missing out. Don Quixote is a man who is a dreamer, some would say a madman. He was a writer during the time of the Spanish Inquisition, his true self was Miguel De Cervantes. He wrote a story of the character Don Quixote however, who experienced all kinds of crazy adventures.

Aldonza was the name of the girl who was basically the town whore. She sings a song about her life and how she resolved herself to a life determined by the circumstances and influences of the people upon her life. Don Quixote comes across her, and he sees someone entirely different. He sees a beautiful innocent angel who can be pure and enjoy life. He sees aldonza as dulcinea, and sings her a song which pours out his vision of who she truly is inside. Aldonza thought he was a kook and out of his mind,and even said he was more cruel than any of the men who used her and abused her in her life because he gave her a hope and vision of becoming someone she felt disqualified from being.

I think of this story when i reflect on how I have let influences,attitudes and treatment of myself from early childhood as well as into teenage years have such a devastating impact upon my inmost feelings about myself. I know i have developed various distortions and delusions which twist and turn who I really am as having been created in the image of God. I can see how at various times and in weird ways I have felt like God was Don Quixote and was extremely cruel for His giving me a picture of who I truly was and could be. My sharing helps to push out that distortion and to fully take in the identity He gives me and sees me as having, especialy via Jesus taking me and making me His own. I hope more and more I will actualize the identity of my own *dulcinea* that Jesus gives me as I experience His love, grace and peace more and more completely.