Blurred Lines

Four intersecting lines – two horizontal and two vertical now define my house – a simple rectangle, really just a box, a container.  The horizon cuts through the length of the house, beyond its walls, beyond the page, from one infinite end to the other infinite end.

I look at those intersecting lines, reflecting what they might represent…

Date of birth?

Time of death?

My departures?

My returns?

Natural gifts, abilities, flaws?

I sense there is more to this house than these four lines. 

The seemingly empty space surrounding them and the space filling their insides pushes on both sides of these lines.

The external forces of culture - the time and the place I 'randomly' occupy at any given moment? Its history? Its daily buzz-feed?

The internal forces of family of origin? Family by grace? Friends, enemies, frenemies? 

The unrepeatable mixture of nature and nurture that creates the unrepeatable one-of-a-kind you and me.

Where the black lines intersect is where I sense the lines being blurred the most...

Compassion and caution…

Grace and truth…

Mercy and justice…

I feel thoroughly inadequate to sustain such structure, deeply aware of the finite capacity of my life to embody any one of those. I sense that forces of life in and around me constantly blurring these lines. 

My reality tugging against the imagined ideal.

I know that in and of my unaided self, I am destined to fail. My house to crumble. My ideals to crash and burn.

I need something outside this structure to anchor its walls and roof, its windows and doors.  

A foundation that runs deeper than the bottom line, much deeper than even the bottom of my page.