You have to admit, the great thing about The Roofless Church is that I get to go through these over thought rants of reflection so you don’t have to.  My mind pretty much doesn’t shut off.  If I’m not using it, it’s running on auto-pilot scanning the created and uncreated Universe looking for signs of Truth and Life.  No, I’m not talking about some alien Star Trek™ ish.  I’m not that weird.  At least not yet.  I’m talking about paying attention to the world around me as well as the thoughts and things that I imagine.  I figure, if I’m here, I might as well pay attention to what’s going on.  Plus a long time ago I had a situation where I chose to accept God as an Absolute.  There was no going back after that.  Since then, I’ve been working on living my life in that context.  What came to me was the idea that if I could imagine such a thought of Absolute,  then there was more to our presence than a body called by a certain name, a bunch of experiences, and some random thoughts and reactions to the thoughts and experiences of other bodies.

According to my beliefs, I have been created by an Absolute Power of singular focus.  Perhaps it is all an illusion, but it’s what I have to go on right now.  Without going too deep, I accept that if I was created by this Absolute God, then my Source is that which created everything that exists as well as the potential of what could, might, and will exist.  Basically, in my mind, I ,as well as everyone and everything I will witness and imagine in my life, springs forth from an infinite Source of power and creation.  I experience this Source as God and learned about God through the Christian path.

Therefore, as an adherent to this belief, I have developed an intolerance with the “they made me” statements I have heard consistently throughout my life.  How can someone make what has already been created?  It must be a trick. It is disturbing to me how easily we will relinquish our power to the “theys” of the world.  I have spent my entire life trying to figure out who “they” is.  As a result, I have exposed myself to various circumstances and forces trying to gain wisdom and assist others along the Way who are sick and tired of “them”. 

Growing up, I had a lot of people try to “make me”.  It was pretty annoying, but I couldn’t hate on them because they actually believed that someone made them. I even got jumped quite a few times in most of the neighborhoods I lived in by people trying to make me.  The thing was, it wasn’t because they didn’t like me–or at least that’s what I tell myself.  I believe that they were just acting as an extension of the forces that they were taught “made them.” My presence was uncomfortable to some people because it was outside of the parameters they were taught to see the world in.  In their minds, they had a duty to eliminate variation.  Essentially, if I existed then their world was a lie.  I actually had a kid tell me once that if he was as light as me he too would’ve gotten an “A” on a test that we took.  He actually believed I was smarter than him because I was lighter.  He was taught that crap.   

Since I’m a Black American, I’ll stick to our story of being “made”. Here’s the quick version that shouldn’t take much thought to swallow:

Our slavery of was an abusive and divisive relationship that lasted over 450 years.  If you think about how the news tells us stories of kids who will kill their parents because they didn’t get a  bike for their seventh birthday,  you can imagine the kind of mark a relationship like slavery could leave on our psyche.  It did a good job of convincing many of us that we could be made.  But like Tupac Shakur’s poem, The Rose That Grew From Concrete, being kept down is no one’s final destiny.

Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature’s law is wrong it
learned to walk with out having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it’s dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.

Now before I go any further, let me say that I don’t believe “they” is white people.  I’m just illustrating a point using my own cultural legacy.  If you are white and you happen to be reading this don’t start feeling all guilty.  In my belief, people who walk around feeling guilty do a lot more harm than good.  Besides, if you feel guilty by my statements, then you just let me make you.  That is not my intention and contradictory to my purpose in writing this.

In my sense of reality we are all come form the same Source.  Therefore, in all of my communications I am trying to foster an understanding that leads to healthier relationships with one another.  What I want to convey here is that we are all Loved.  We were created by Love, through Love, and for Love.  It is for this reason that I say that I can’t and won’t be made by any thoughts other than Love.

Oh SNAP!  I think I just figure out who “they” is. It took my whole Life and these paragraphs to realize that “they” are thoughts other than Love.  If you think about it, it makes sense. Can you see where I’m going with this?  If you think about every wack thing you ever did, I bet you can trace it back to a thought of fear or an insecurity of some kind.  I know I can.  So if we assume that the “they” we all deal with are thoughts of fear and insecurity and their cousins regret, guilt, shame etc. instead of some mysterious group of people, we actually come out with a little more power of choice. 

Man, I wish I could go a little further with this, but it took long enough for me to get to this point, so I will just leave you all hanging.  I’ll just suggest that the next time you feel yourself wanting to react to something, remember that no one can make you do anything that you don’t want to do–especially some disembodied thoughts that tell you that you aren’t Loved and created from the Absolute Source of all Creation.  We have a choice.  It will always be up to us what we do with that Power.