Beyond Life's Boxes

Out of the Box

I want out. Out of the box. Out of whatever box people have me in. My heart and mind and soul call me out. The Christ of my faith calls me out.

I don't want to be in a Republican box or Democrat box, a conservative or liberal box. I don't want to be in any of the ideological or political religious boxes, either. I don’t want to be in any boxes of inherently divisive identity. And I don’t want to argue about political parties or political identity, save my freedom to be out of those boxes. It's all a frustrating waste of my time and yours. I want out.

Save me from the dance, the totentanz, of one step forward and two steps back spitting vitriol and hissing at each other through clenched teeth. Save me from the disingenuous who engage the debate offering up misleading information and shouting half-truths—for whom winning is more important than good answers or reasonable solutions, more important than serving and helping. Save me from those whose ersatz patriotism, faith or altruism declared artfully thinly veils self-interest, ambition, even avarice, the need for power, even control. I want out.

I want to talk about issues and answers, problems and solutions, building community and supporting people. I want to talk about respect for families (however those families may be arrayed) and local communities, yes, but also for different cultural identities in local and national community—in international community, too, however difficult the challenge, however frail and attenuated the reality. In these places, we can find common ground, respect, inclusion, can’t we?

Can’t I support or not support—or change my mind about supporting—an answer or solution without instigating ad hominem disparagement of people in various boxes, even me? Can’t we disagree on an issue and still find common ground on another—and respect each other in the process? Can’t we give more open-minded attention to the process, the way we identify issues, carry out inquiries, analyze findings—and agree on what we know and don’t know? Can we be rational? Can we do it together?

We can. And we can also agree that we have the potential for real community, and that that’s a good thing. We can listen to what other people are hearing, read what other people are reading, watch for what other people are seeing. We can try to understand. We can agree that we have responsibilities toward each other, for each other. We can allow this to inform our understandings, to raise our hopes and aspirations for community, too. (It is allowed.)

But can I be for economic growth and still place people and community first? For competitive markets and also for social justice? For free markets, but also protective laws? Can I be for individual opportunity, initiative, and reward, and still expect those who create or earn more to contribute more? Can I be for families, as I find mine, without being against yours, as you may find it? Can I be for freedom, mine, without denying you yours?

I can. And more, I can live by my faith and allow others to live by theirs, or not. I can live a faithful life—devout, in its own flawed way—without the need to legislate or force-feed my faith ideals on those who neither profess my faith nor have any interest in it. I can be confident in how God reveals himself to me in the writings He inspires, in prayer, in community, in the Mystery of His intimacy with me—and still respect the faith orientations of others, and hear and see God in them. You can, too. (It is allowed.)

And if others claim a faith in God, can’t I expect to sense something of His presence in them? Can’t I expect more love than legalism? More forgiveness than judgment? Can’t I expect more humility than self-righteousness? More compassion and charity than self-interest and selfishness? Can’t I reasonably expect to sense their trust that God is in charge, and that others can make their own faith choices as they feel led by God or not?

But you think I ask too much, don’t you? People can’t take me out of one box without putting me in another. I understand that. It’s just the sense of order we apparently need to live with who we are and the seemingly random, uncontrollable circumstances of life. We seem desperate to create or declare our own sense of order and profess cultural, ideological or religious faith in it—and with it, find comfort in identity. It’s just the way we are wired and put together. I may want out, but it doesn’t seem to be part of the deal.

Is it also too much to ask, then, that others would respect me and let me grow in my own way in the box they have me in? And that I would treat them with the same respect in whatever box I may have them in (even if we won’t openly concede that we have each other in boxes)? It probably is—too much to ask, that is—isn’t it? Oh, we could agree that it isn't, yes, but it wouldn’t last. However right and appealing it might be, it just doesn’t seem to be part of the deal either.

So, how about this: I’ll live my life as well as I know how, and others can do the same. We will try, so far as we are able, to respect each other. But failing that, we will politely tolerate each other. Civility. I can live with that. How about you?

First written: December 2004. Edited 2007, 2008

Getting Out
For the same reasons I had to get in, I had to get out. It’s my seeking nature, my passion, my need to know, my need to grow. And while I was sometimes sad to leave, they often seemed loath to let me go. It’s about affirmation and collective identity, I think. But getting into those boxed in places of identity and experience is so much easier than getting out.

If I’ve believed in better understandings and answers (better thinking), new beginnings and endings (cycles and changes), causes and effects (reasons), that there is something right or true out there to believe in (or at least something more), then I’ve had no choice, no other way to go. I’ve had to keep on seeking, testing and trying, accepting and rejecting, and moving on—again and again. Out of one box and into another.

I’ve been eager to believe in, be part of, the different perspectives and identities along the way—each, in its time, offering yet another answer, the next best place for me, perhaps. Sometimes it was where I wanted to be or was mandated to be, others it was just where I found myself. Each offered comfort in community and identity, purpose and work, and a rather defined measure of growth. But I was ever aware that each new perspective offered was defined as much by opposite or different perspectives as by its own trumpeted virtues.

And when I had lived with each perspective long enough, understood it well enough, defending it inevitably involved more qualifications, more reservations, than I was comfortable making. The inherent virtues and value of other, differing perspectives would sooner or later become as apparent as their flaws and inadequacies. But to entertain change, to qualify or broaden my perspective, is not often encouraged or even abided. The depths and rigidities of most people’s emotional need for others’ unchanging identity, their need to define prevailing orthodoxy, those conforming and nonconforming, creates an ideological, philosophical and theological firewall which excludes truly open-minded inquiry, analysis and changing views.

And so, most cannot comfortably abide change in others—not without a sense of breach of faith or broken trust, that is. To grow further always seems to require a change in identity, an element of abandonment, pure and simple. That’s just life in those boxes. Change brings marginalization, and notable change, alienation. There is nowhere to go but out and away. And the relationships, at least anything enduring about them, often ends there, too. But many people do conform, and others stay and feign conformity. The alternative, the rejection and loneliness of being marginalized or ostracized, is just too much for them. They live with the cognitive dissonance as well as they can.

But for some, the dissonance cannot be resolved in favor of uncomfortable, feigned identity. For me, the choice to stay or move on has been no choice at all. But it has usually meant moving into yet another box, another community, affiliating with a new group of people, changing, continuing to grow, and then moving on again. But no more, please. No more boxes.

First written: January – June 2005

Being Out
For the same reasons I had to get out, I must learn to be out. It’s the direction it’s all been going, where I am being ushered. I can no longer go on into the next box because I have run out of meaningful boxes. There is no longer any promise of learning or growth in any of those places. There is only the discomfiting reality of different paths, misunderstanding, wasted time, and the need to get out and be out.

I’m growing to like it outside those boxes. And I can’t go back; once here, almost nobody can. That unfettered feeling and the ambiguous loneliness is increasingly more welcome outside the succession of boxed-in places. (The cognitive dissonance, the revolt of my soul, had become less bearable at each successive stop.) I’m exploring this new place now, a not-too-lonely place, not really, a place of evolving identity without walls, a place that seeks and draws people to different answers, more comprehensive answers, transcendent answers. It is a place, of sorts, but also the companion Spirit of God, who leads you there.

But can I go forward without the feeling of going backward? Must I now retreat, or keep a dispassionate, perhaps clinical, distance from the world? For if there is the promise of social, cultural, even spiritual transcendence in it all, there is also the potential for disengagement, the risk of loneliness, even depression. Or should I seek others in that place, others with similar experiences, similar growth and insights, similar resolve to move forward? And if I do, have I not just backed into yet another box?

It sounds like another box, but isn’t. A freer place, it is affirming and patient, yet challenging; it opens new intellectual and spiritual vistas. But it is more than a free forum of ideas: it is more purposeful, more prepared and guided, a path that’s traveled but not well-worn, a new beginning with an unseen but trusted direction. It contemplates that some people are called to walk a path of many turns; it understands both the need and value of doing so. And the people you encounter there, while affirming and facilitating, seem relatively few—and you don’t find them as often as they find you.

And it’s true that until you find others in that place, you can feel a little lonely, bereft of kindred folk. And it’s also true that you maintain a safer distance from the earlier places and people, your exchanges less open, more careful and measured. They are no longer places that offer the same emotional safe travel or shared identity. But if relationships there are different than they were, they can still be places of caring, respect, goodwill, and helpfulness. There can still be common ground or common cause. They can still be friends, but fewer are.

Yet, I cannot deny my humanity, the way we are all made: my need for identity, significance, community. Can that be found in this place outside of boxes? Are my muse, my companion Spirit, the fewer kindred folk enough? Am I only fooling myself? And what of that other voice that responds, asking, “How has it changed you? What good has it done? Who has it brought you closer to, and who has it distanced you from? Are you happier, or less happy? How? Are you more loved or less loved? By whom? Whom do you love, and do you love more or fewer people more or less? Does it matter? And how did you get here, anyway? And why?”

I don’t have honest, sufficient answers to all those questions, yet. Maybe I am more often lonelier, even a little depressed from time to time. And if illness lingers as it too often does, plays its part too long, then the "dark night" may seem even darker, I must confess. There have been parched and barren stretches, it’s true, but I am now freer of the stale, spent identities that I used to be in the boxes I used to be in. And true, there are now fewer people and affirmations in my life, but it has its compensations, its consolations, of which I’ve highly spoken. So valued are they in fact that I can see and pursue only that path that leads forward. I now relate to the world in more purposeful, incarnational terms, much more as an integrated organic and spiritual whole, of which I am part. And the companion Spirit of God, my muse, the fewer kindred folk, they are enough.

More answers are no doubt around corners not yet turned, corners turned by invitation only. I do feel well prepared to go on—and I really have no choice. It seems to be my season for this place. And I live with quiet but excited anticipation, waiting for the next corner to turn. I’d invite you along, but it is not my invitation to give.

First written: January – June 2005

Couldn’t Take You with Me

I couldn’t take you with me. And you didn’t want to come. Remember? That same uncanny, purposeful sense of fate that threw us together, scattered us like expatriates of Babel having lost the language, relationship and purpose of our time and place. And it didn’t matter when or where, because of you with me, it seemed like magic there. Was it school, the Marines, a church, another sojourn or road we traveled? Was it a shared faith, philosophy, or professional life? Or was it the causes and organizations, the boards and councils, or our retreats and pastimes, where our passions and purposes brought us together in common cause? Wherever it was, you were there and so was I. We knew there was a reason; we knew it was important, at least to us—and we were grateful for it. But just as fatefully, purposefully, and surely as we felt brought together, we felt pulled apart. You were gone and so was I.

You moved in your direction and I in mine, you to one box, I to another—and then another. I’ve been in some very different places with some very different people. Perhaps I’ve been led there, as I have said. But even if ushered there by serendipity alone, I’ve encountered a lot of the stuff, stories and lessons of life—seeing into it, then past it. My eyes have been widened and then narrowed, but now feel softer, more comfortable, wiser, more generous. They now see new things, and old things new. I can’t change what I’ve seen and know. I can’t and won’t go back. The call, the challenge is still in going forward. But I couldn’t take you with me then, and I can’t take you with me now. I would, but you have your own invitations and path to follow. I still love you and miss you—but in that time, place or cause we once shared together. And I’m still grateful for that time together, what it meant to me then and what it means to me now.

First written: January – June 2005

Freedom
And after it all, do consider this: your only real freedom among our array of boxed-in experiences and identities may be in moving beyond them. It seems we spend our lives working our way through opportunities to understand that. It involves finding a greater sense of freedom at the margins of our identity in the world, and an increasing sense of humility. That freedom and humility dispose us to be found by the One who calls us, and go as His Spirit leads—joyfully taking up whatever invitations, challenges or changes await us there.

First written: January – June 2005
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007

Beyond Life's Boxes

Sunday, September 30, 2007

Contents

Beyond Life's Boxes

Prefatory Comments

Blog Archive