Everyone knows. I thought I could conceal it for a few more years, but it's too late now. Whether they saw me in aisle 15 or in aisle 26, from a distance or from the back or right up close chatting in a deep voice with a guy in a red vest on a stocking cart, they'll have picked up on it right away. I am an impostor in at least half the aisles at Home Depot. I might be able to say "3/4 inch anti-siphon valve with union," but I don't know how to install one and I know that they know that I don't know.

I know how I look when I'm in aisle 15, because I know how Janet looks when she comes out of a lecture on "French postmodernism and the rise of aesthetic methodology in hermeneutics."

We all know how it feels when we're somewhere we don't belong. We know because it is one of the most fundamental human needs, the need to feel at home with ourselves and our surroundings. There is no greater desire than to long to know to whom we belong and that we are not an impostor there, but utterly and completely at home. Every religious tradition responds in some way to this fundamental need for identity. Jesus' prayer in John's gospel is for us all, that we may know our identity beyond a social security number, a driver's license number, or a Nordstrom account number. The prayer of Jesus is that we may know to whom we belong. It is a prayer of incredible intimacy.