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From job to job and place to place I have built a reputation for saying what I think. Often people appreciate my openness in that I say what everyone was hoping would be said. Just as often people wish I had not spoken as I lead the group off on a red herring that exists pretty much only in my imagination. But my sincerity, guided and misguided, remains unquestioned.

That is, unquestioned by everyone but me. I think I have been straightforward about some minor things and not so straightforward about one of the most important things.

The other night I had a dream. I was a member of a CIA family. I think that I was an adult child in this family, although the family was not my family of origin. We were linked to the CIA. The CIA did not call on us often, and to date had not called on us for any really heavy or deadly work. We did odd little jobs. Collecting small pieces of information and feeding them back. Being present in places on assignment, but not required to do anything except be present.

As a reward for the little we did the CIA assured us, and I believed it whole heartedly, that we would have its support any time we needed that support. In my dream, I was comforted to know the CIA sustained me, at the same time as I was mildly concerned about what future demand the CIA might make of me.

I count it as no coincidence that this dream happened on a night that I had fallen asleep questioning my sincerity in the marketplace.

I am a liberal Christian. In the marketplace I keep my Christianity fairly quiet, as in the church I keep my liberal views pretty much to myself. I am far from sincere about the most important facet of my life: my deep conviction that I am linked to a God who supports and sustains me and up until now has asked very little of me in return.

I was standing in line in the mess hall at church camp. We had just finished singing our grace before the meal. Someone else's seven year-old boy standing in front of me turned to brag that in his family they prayed before every meal. I responded: "You should pray always."

With those words I felt an enormous relief that I had articulated, confessed one of the underlying truths of my life. Of course, I expect no great praise for this. Challenging a seven year old boy at church camp does not rank with Luther's nailing his beliefs to the church door. I am embarrassed that I chose to try to make a child feel inadequate. But, I had succeeded in saying what I never say: that I feel linked to some unamenable source of power and see it as my bounden duty always to acknowledge that fact with some small part of my consciousness. I never tell anybody that. Even in church I do not say that and certainly never in business.

I could kid myself by saying: "So what?" I could pretend that such an acknowledgment would make little difference in business discourse if I had not recently been on the receiving end of a God related statement that made ultimate sense. Here is what happened:

I was talking with a friend about speaking and had just suggested an approach to dealing with the audience, an approach that had to do with being conscious of my impact, when she said: "If I do that God leaves me." She went on to say that as long as she was reliant on God to give her the words, the right, correct, and apt words would occur to her, she would speak with power, but as soon as she became concerned about how she was being seen her speech would become stilted, her impact lessened. Her topic, by the way, was not theology but Quality and she would not describe herself as a Christian, does not attend a Christian church, but has experienced something in her life that she feels deserves the title of "God."

It is not being sincere about Christianity that I advocate here. I must be sincere about Christianity because I am a Christian. But what I am advocating here is being sincere and open about our deepest religious convictions.

What stops me more than anything else is the fear that I will be mistaken for a conservative Christian, or for a non-thinking Christian, sometimes the same thing, but sometimes different. When I do tell people that I am a committed Christian I can see them loading into their mental computers software associated with the term that does not apply to me.

I think that they will presume that I neither understand or value other religions. (I do understand them and I do value them. After study and reflection I have found the following of Jesus preferable.) I think that they will expect to find me sexually moralistic. (On some matters I am moralistic, but sexuality seems to me a fun sport to be limited only slightly by good sense. Jesus showed little interest in controlling it.) I think they will presume that I know all the right answers when in fact I have more questions than most atheists I know.

That is my primary fear in revealing my religious conviction. That I will be seen to be someone I am not.

If despite this fear I were to take the risk of sincerity about my religious conviction, Christianity, in addition to clarity about my need to remain consciously connected to God and my need to get out of the way and let God speak through me, I would be clear about my belief that God is trying to instruct me daily. I would encourage other people to wait for God's answer to their questions. "It will come," I would say, "in a sudden flash of insight. Or in a comment from the person whose advice you would be the least likely to seek. Or God will speak to you in a dream and answer your question there, wisdom buried in the symbols."

I do not talk like that. That is a sincerity that I have not risked, and that is why God has sent me a dream that I am a member of a CIA family. The way I read the story of that night is that I am connected to God, God sustains me, and God asks very little of me. But I am keeping this relationship and this job a secret. I am sneaking around, only rarely doing God's work, and never acknowledging my affiliation.

I have now begun. I am not doing a lot but at least I am doing a little.

The other day as a friend of mine told me of the surgery he was about to have I asked that he tell me the exact time of that surgery when he knew what time it would be. "As a person who believes in the power of prayer, I would find that helpful," I said. He told me that he too believed in the power of prayer, something I had not known and would never have known if I had not risked this particular sincerity.

"You will have to wait for your answer," I told a client on the phone. "God has not yet had the opportunity to tell me what to do." Maybe she thought I was kidding. I left leeway for her to think that because I am short on courage. I am really afraid to have a client think me odd. But I did wait and God did tell me what to do the very next day. I told my client that God had spoken, once again allowing her room to think I was not all that serious.

My yoga instructor has picked up the difference in my attitude without my articulating it. The other day she approached me, singled me out after class, and said that the Book of the Dead says that for ninety seven days after death it is worthwhile to pray for a soul and her brother has been dead only a couple of weeks would I pray for his soul. Without hesitation I have signed up. A Christian who has been asked to pray by a Hindu for an Atheist. I am proud to do it. All three of us belong to the CIA. He never proclaimed his atheism. She has only hinted at being a Hindu. I have pretended I did not take Christianity seriously.

I am nearly sixty years old and I have just begun to risk sincerity in the marketplace, and for that matter everywhere else.

The author of this essay is John Cowan. He has written two books of similar essays: Small Decencies and The Common Table Each is approximately 160 pages in paperback. To purchase either book by mail send a check for $10 per book to him at 1498 Goodrich, St. Paul, MN 55105. Price will be negotiated for any order over 20 books. If you wish to discuss consulting or speaking engagements or attendance at a workshop he may be reached by e-mail. His address is Johnedie@aol.com

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