Manifesto

Who am I?

I am not the stocks in my portfolio, the balance in my bank account, my pay grade, my annual profit or loss, my bottom line, my credit rating, my debts, nor the cash in my pocket...

I am not the label in my suit coat, the slogan on my t shirt, the brand name on my jeans, the gems on my fingers, the tattoo on my skin, the style of my hair, nor the color of my skin...

I am not my philosophy, my world view, my theological scheme, nor my first principles...

I am not the tools in my toolbox nor the weapons within my reach...

I am not what I have learned, what I have memorized, my academic degrees, my GPA, my test scores, nor the university I attended...

I am not my career, my profession, the business I started, the company I work for, the contract I wrote, the clients I signed, the pay raise I earned, my promotions nor my prospects...

I am not the billboard's display, the critic's review, the newspaper's headline, nor the gossip's whisper...

I am not my gifts, my arts, my skills nor my unique abilities and insights...

I am not my inventions, my buildings, my fields, my farms, my barns, nor my stores...

I am not the films I have watched, the play list in my iPod, my Facebook site, the television program, the actor on the screen, the media forced my way, the magazine assertion, nor the book in hand...

I am not my present shaping, my time on the track, the reps I can lift, nor my athletic skills...

I am not my genes, my ancestry, my parents, my siblings, nor the family I have raised...

I am not my arousal, my virulence, nor my sexuality...

I am not what the doctor diagnosed, the scheduled medications, the test results, nor the prognosis...

I am not the physical pain I feel, the mood enfolding me, the emotion I display, nor the heartbreak I have known...

I am not the decades I have lived, the texture of my skin, the lines on my face nor the changes in my hair...

I am not my triumphs and my failures. I am not my errors and omissions. I am not my sins...

I am not the dialect that sounds out my speech...

I am not a sign in the stars nor the zodiac's product...

I am not the place on which I stand nor the place I wish I could be...

I am not the natural realm which surrounds me...

I am not my nation, my clan, my platoon nor my team...

I am not what this culture says I am...

I am not this body, these atoms, nor this material form...

These are only the clothing, the adornments and the burdens worn by this soul. What's left? What remains underneath when all these are stripped away? What would I put down on a resume I was going to hand to God?

Sometimes I think we are like a colony of animals who have inherited a dusty plane, and we invent little hills of dust to elevate ourselves above the flatness. Scrape the dust up in piles with our wings and then stand there on top, claiming our ground, insisting that each millimeter of altitude is a good thing, for we were made for elevation. We pick our pile, fight for it, market it, pass it on to our children, all the while calling it high and good deriving from it our identity. But wings were given for something else.

I would like to be able to put on my resume that I learned to fly. Just a little. And helped others fly even higher and better.

And flight, of course, is a metaphor for what we are when the power of life - real life - and the devotion of love momentarily meld in human existence. For love without Life is a Hallmark card - light and thin and sentimental. Life drags in something breathing and bleeding, something dangerous, wet, full of desire, something liable to break things to pieces. Life gives love muscularity in service, meticulous care in devotion, ferocity in defense, aggression in desire. Life without love is homelessness, a bright fire warming no one , a high flight with no destination, a clanging triumphal procession by a soul which has never triumphed over a single instant of its existence.

We have been taught to pick one dusty hill and stand happily on its summit, surveying the world from our unique vantage point, imagining an identity somehow derived from a good situation. And every such identity is limited, short-sighted, and ultimately dead, for the hills of dust can never be more than well shaped parts of a dying world. And if one insists on clinging to their hilltop identity they will ultimately remain alone - for the hill is never finished; it is never high enough, and it is always tumbling down, and everyone becomes an enemy threatening your absolute work. And the sound of wings heaping up the dusty earth forever sounds there, and no one will ever join the task of the dead.