IT IS ... UNTIL IT ISN'T

The life we live is governed by social constraints. We are immersed in the dos and don’ts of the world in which we exist. We are submerged in the etiquette of our time and doused with the familial adaptations of such. The old adage, “We are a product of our environment” is more true than we would like to believe. We go about our daily business making sure that we fit the bill and those with whom we associate are expected to do likewise. If not, the sense of guilt that invades our false sense of peace is immeasurable. We feel the wet ink stain of the REBEL imprinted upon our foreheads and no matter how we attempt to ignore it, its liquid shame runs down our face and into our eyes. We are blinded by it. The lines of our dynamic backdrop are blurred and askew. We cannot make out the horizon. We stumble forward, groping and hoping that we are headed in the direction of the impossible…if we believe the hype.

The mold was set by our forefathers and our immediate caste (I mean family) added a slight spin, but never truly broke free. We are in the matrix. Even our rebellion is text book. We walk, talk, love, laugh, live, work and die in line. Anyone who dares to claim their uniqueness merely takes the garment and changes it color. She/he may shorten or lengthen the code, but it is cut from the same cloth. Any real variation from the “norm” is rarely seen. Life is as life has been with varying shades of green, blue, white and yellow. There is nothing new under the sun. We dance to the same music, played by the same instruments that we convince ourselves is nothing like it was – all cut from the same tree, shaved off of the same animal, created in the same laboratories.

I have come to wonder, in the not so recent past, if we can really call to action “Be in the world, but not of it.” We flow along the same channels, being transported by the ebb and flow of each nuance and wave. We take into consideration those around us and call into remembrance the definition and meaning of our lives from our ancestral common thread. What did our forefathers do when times got hard? I am not referring strictly to the course of action in which they realized the manifestation of their desires. We look back on the thought process that got them to their goal and utilize that as a barometer to gauge life’s events and our interactions with those whom we come into contact with on our journey. We take our finite view and experience and define everyone and everything we come in contact with, taking no thought of their process. We judge. We condemn. We damage and hurt people with our tunnel vision; it is this way, until it isn’t.

As believers we must understand that our societal norms are not based on community, it is based on separatism. We are encouraged to think about how a certain action will benefit self. We are programmed to look for the personal profit in what happens around us. We can pretend it is not the case, until we cannot pretend anymore. We can do unto others as we would have them do unto us, until we can’t. We can give, until we can’t. We smile, until we can’t. We engage and participate and revel in accomplishments, until we can’t. We perform…until we can’t. Then what? We begin to push against the mold. We fight against the constraints. We experience stress, pressure and tension in our soul because we are kicking against the pricks of expectation and adaptation. Our mind tries to expand and the cast bulges. This creates friction in our circles because, at times, we want to experience the polar opposite of what is our life. We are happy, until we’re not.

We believers have God, in Christ, in us. He is the same, yesterday, today and forever. He is immutable…unchanging. He was. He is. He is to come. Yet, we live out the mundane looking for the supernatural end. Our lives, lived in this world, are not to be experienced the same fashion, as those who don’t acknowledge God. We walk behind the mold; we are not imprisoned within it. We act and respond from a place that cannot be tainted by what is sensual or temporal. Our perspective is eternal. It is…and it will forever be. When life happens, we reach inward to a place well beyond our focal reality to have an experience which supersedes the norm. We are created in His image and in His likeness. We have a means that is not of this world by which we can determine what the outcome will be by having the belief/faith of God. When He spoke, He created. He did not take into account what He experienced with five senses. He knew it, spoke it, believed it and it was. It still is.