Here I go convincing myself and the other that we should think of all that we knew the first moments of our lives. When we saw our moms and tried out our lungs our first thought was one shared by all, “big, open, new space!?!?”
I read an article recently that argued for a way of seeing that exists outside of the realm of shared human history. This scholar was saying brilliant things-however, they were vested in a system that, if assumptions were followed to their end, would serve only those who understood things their way, had a similar life experience and happened to care about the preservation of a certain religious system-a whole ton. The article would have felt deeply true I suppose if I felt on the inside of some tradition with its creeds and liturgies, but I don’t, and maybe I never will.
I hate feeling on the outside, and perhaps you do too. I was listening in on a meeting the other day. It was a meeting of a large group of people, all from a certain Christian tradition, and I had to leave. I felt like the hidden script was, “you don’t belong here.” It was nothing the speaker said or the group itself, I just felt on the outside. Was I reading between the lines? Or is there a fear deeply rooted in who I am as a person that produced this conclusion? The more I reflect on this impulse-this feeling of exclusion- the more I think it has something to do with a larger story that we as humans, religious or non, choose to tell.
The story is reactionary and acts as a preservative. It prides itself on always landing on the right side of an issue or a conversation and has to define, therefore, right and wrong for everyone else. Relationships die from this sort of ethos. With no common history we have little clue where we might go together-where the path of shared history might lead. I fear then that this story spends most of its time finding creative ways, we as humans, might divide ourselves. Perhaps the truth behind all of this is that the further labels constitute how we order our world the further we become divided as individuals, internally and socially.
And so I feel on the outside, sometimes lonely. Is it because I have purchased shares in the story of categorization and as a consequence landed myself in a dualistic (non-whole) way of understanding myself? I’m looking for common ground that is deep enough to sustain love and beautiful and fruit worth following. My inkling is that this is a way of peace and honesty, naked as the day we stepped into this world. Perhaps new thinking requires new birth-a exodus from the old and a trust that the ways we are connected are binding in some way.
