So the new tax bill has passed. Right now, I am quite neutral about it. Not really. I have heard some sensible arguments from many fronts as to where we will find ourselves as the page turns. That - is always the case. We are at this point in the ongoing story. I learned long ago that we must always take the story - our story and the world story to the next step and write and then.
Unfortunately, it is not easy to keep an eye on that which becomes our story as the page turns. It is too easy to think we can see it - and yet, we usually see the road out ahead through the lens of that which we have done or seen up to that point or the lens we have been handed. Usually, that lens has been handed to us and we have been told it will provide us with good vision. When we see things through the lens we have been handed or the one we say we have studied or learned in the game of 'hard knocks' - it is much too easy to discount what others see - or, that others could possibly see things differently than me - maybe even more clearly at times. Could it be that we are all too willing to stuff our stories with nothing but our own shit - self-made taxidermist - rather than turn the page ready to be a part of an ever changing storyline? If we stick to our own shit, then we lose the element of surprise that is possible as we stop and consider the wonder within a story that comes to the turn of the page with the words and then.
While walking yesterday, I spent sixty minutes listening to an economist being interviewed about the new tax bill and where we may or may not be going. He is - to be honest - someone from the liberal side of the spectrum - but no mere talking-head. He is renowned and trusted. Throughout the conversation - though he never said it - I heard him offer an and then that turned my head and made me listen more intently. Several times he said that he held a position and then he was surprised to see it differently - he saw new things within new conditions that were not set into his original way of seeing the story. I think he disturbed the interviewer - but he opened the door for another person - me - to be willing to come into an ongoing story ready to face whatever may come at the turn of the page. Now, I do not think that this means we simply let things come and pass by. Rather, we must turn the page and then settle on nothing but the fact that the welfare of all demands the ability to listen - to argue - to change - to stand firm - and then take the chance to be involved in some kind of joint-authorship in which things change - my things and your things and even their things - even when we want to say to hell with their story. I think the words in Scripture tend to be: Fear Not.
I think I misspoke earlier. I am not neutral about the tax bill. I can see the terror it will bring. Now before you blow this off - I always think such grand schemes of an utopian vision are terrifying. They come out of the butt-holes of all of us when we we think this is it - this is the end - everyone now will live happily ever after. Those stories are lies - all of our stories that say such things. They really only reveal the falsehood that we are duped to trust when we stop saying and then or refuse to listen to how others continue on after they say or write and then. If all that continues on from one point to the next is the vision I have had - or my side holds dear - we are as a whole people - screwed. We are screwed because we do not take into consideration the other story lines and therefore the culture we attempt to hail as redemptive is really another form of a disease that infects and destroys everything.
I have been blessed to hear many stories. For me, that means I have been invited to hear that which goes on when people of other storylines come to the place when they say and then. They often begin to turn the page and move forward in a way of which I am simply ignorant. How quickly many of those stories do not ring forth with the privilege that accompanies my storyline. It is disarming to hear. And yet, the most common way people listen to other stories - is simply to not listen to them at all - that's pretty damn easy. Or, maybe worse, hear them through our storyline or try to see them through our lens - which really - is not hearing or seeing at all.
Once again, yesterday, I was reminded of how easy it is to stick to my own story - to live as though I know what will be - once I say and then. I was ready to react with a classic 'bullshit' and then dump another storyline to the pile of bullshit I so often reject so that my story can continue on to the next page - my page. It was a disarming moment. I felt the fear - the confusion - the bitterness - the neglect - the self-pity, that - 'within a moment of time' embarrassed me. No one could see it and - to be honest - I don't often feel it so deeply to even recognize it. What was it? Someone else picked up the story after the words and then and it was not one that I wanted to hear - I even wanted to consider it a lie. But, it was no lie. It was the voice of a story I thought I knew. But I was really hearing a deeper level of that story. I was not the story I thought I knew. It was a new turn in that story that was taking me to a new and then. As I walked away, I knew that somehow I had to watch how I follow lies I want to be my truth and my way. For, at times, that which I want to consider the truth may be nothing more than a self-deceiving lie. Shit.
I'm in a coffee shop right now and took a few moments to look around the room. Wow, the storylines that are flowing through this room humble me - or do they make me consider what an ass I can so easily become. When I say and then I want to say it and live into it with a sense of compassion and a willingness to listen. At the same time, I also want to make sure that as I listen I may rewrite my story so as to stand in a line of resisters or builders who may not be like me. Who knows, they may help me be a part of that which makes us all truly human.
TRRR
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