Day 27
middle
These days I am obsessed with the middle-way. Not just as a concept, but as the lived experience it is for so many of us. I cannot tell you how many conversations I have had in recent years with people who are Christians struggling to articulate the ways in which they do not fit into the camp that the label “Christian” seems to restrict them to. Same on the other side, talking to people with little or no religious background that are tired of being unable to explore traditions and spirituality without having to commit to institutions that have done so much damage. I believe that under our very noses, we are increasingly becoming a people who live under a white flag between war-camps. A people who are tired of hating, tired of hurting each other, tired of being hurt. A people exhausted of the tyranny of having to choose one group to follow loyally, or risk being ostracized.
Democrats and republicans, liberals and conservatives, believers and non-believers, ignorant and enlightened, straight people and the growing acronym that is everyone else; and these days…supporters of isolation and face masks, and people who resist government mandates. It seems to me that the national obsession, the thing that we all understand, is that there is a line and you must choose which side to stand on.
Day 27 of this project is, for me at least, a day to articulate the middle. To decidedly leave whichever camp I’ve been relegated to by those caught up in that paradigm, and settle my ass on the fence. I am not declaring this the “right” thing to do because we are all just too damn attached to clustering around that word, or creating our own “right” for others to cluster around. What I am doing is declaring this fence sitting, this middle ground, a perfectly acceptable place to be. From here you can see both sides, you can meet other confused and vulnerable folks who are frustrated by the two-party systems. Most importantly you can move from the center, and for some of us this is key to deciding how to proceed.
