I have spent the past 15 years or so playing a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. You know, the party game where someone is given a mock-up of a donkey's tail, blindfolded, spun around and around until they are dizzy, and, then, has to try and find the right place to attach the tail to the poster of the Donkey in front of them.

It's been a time of reconnecting myself to reality so that my spirit, mind and body can better synchronize.

For a large swath of my time as a believer, I was obsessed with this notion of 'you are in the world but not of the world .' I viewed myself as an alien. A citizen of heaven rather than this world. I was set apart for great things. I knew that as I was living and breathing, catching buses, painting toenails, and eating hamburgers, I was in the world. But, I was determined not to succumb to its profanity. Wow. What a trip.

Recently, I took time to contemplate and rethink the passage in the Gospel of John.

Jesus says as part of his farewell speech in Chapter 17:14, "I have shared your message with them, and the world has shown hatred towards them because they belong to you and not to the world. They are not a part of this world, just as I am not. While I do not ask that you take them out of the world, I do pray that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it". Later, Jesus commissions them to be sent into the world just as he was sent.

So there we have it. I get it. I didn't make it up.

I had attempted to follow this to the letter and live my best life in two partitions - two zones.

One, the world, inherently suspect and possibly evil. I considered the actions mentioned earlier as worldly, never sacred practices. The other side was my spiritual world of worship, prayer, mission and engagement with God.

I was forever trying to discard my humanness and wriggle into my Jesus clothes. I strived towards perfect status. I didn't look for places of connectivity. There was a dividing line separating the profane and the sacred.

Now, I have become so fascinated with the places where my humanness and my spirituality can mesh together. Indeed, that's the sublime part. Dancing and twirling and then having a go at stabbing my pin into the real world and finding my place. Enjoying the mix.

It is as if I am sitting at a sewing machine with different types of cloth before me. I am trying to piece together outfits that will not only be pleasing to God but also make my sojourn in the world more enjoyable and purposeful.

The Bible has something to say about patches - and possibly donkeys tails. Matthew advises in his gospel that you can't easily tack a piece of unshrunk cloth onto an old piece of cloth. The integrity of the fabric will be compromised. This confounds me now. The God that redeems all things makes my humanity and my spirit hold together despite the awkward joins. We are perfectly imperfect and supernaturally natural.

We can applaud, laugh, and cry as we whip off the blindfold and find we either are way off the mark or have performed the consummate party trick!

The patch is usually visible – only the expert seamstress can make the place of the patch invisible. Nevertheless, God sees the seam and delights in our attempt to marry up the sacred with the everyday things.

We wear our human garments as designed and our spiritual fashions together. A good life can make them cohesive and functional – and beautiful! This task demands authentic behaviour - to act genuinely and sincerely and have a shameless acceptance that people will notice the seams. – the tag will be exposed - and occasionally, I'll wear something inside out and display all the messy seams.

Lions dressed up as lambs. Lambs with giant pink bows on their tails. Elephants in tutus. Donkeys with no tail.

We are only human, after all. Right?