Yesterday, the world learned of the passing of two legends...Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Although their lives were very different, they both lived in the glare of the spotlight and endured the best and worst elements of what that entails.
While superstars live center stage in a larger than life fashion, what strikes me is the deep drive and desire for recognition that exists in all of us. We all come into the world with a desire to be somebody.
Life plays out our personal dramas. As I look back in light of recent events, I wonder to what extent we really are more in a search for significance and affirmation than recognition and fame...
*Post below initially posted in July 2008
Most of us emerge on planet earth with all the stridency that our 8 to 9 pounds of flesh can muster. So much so that the infant who emerges without a lusty yell is promptly spanked on the rump to produce one. After all...one has arrived. Say so!
Sideline living is against the grain of human ego. A newborn baby in a household quickly demands just about everyones' waking and non-waking moments. While we relish the joy of observing the expansion of new life in a newborn, this quickly becomes old by the time the child hits the terrible twos. Who can blame the toddler? Relinquishing prime real estate territory at 'the center of a universe of ONE' cannot be easy.
But, I suspect that the inclinations of the toddler do not fully disappear. In most of us, they simply retreat underground; temporarily masked by the need to adhere to social norms but always eager to assume center stage if and when the opportunity arises. A silent witness to the most debilitating form of human suffering...the deep yearning to be given permission to live life with gusto.
Several years ago, I wrote a devotional which I shared with some staff members at a local church. The mediation was entitled "Living in the Margins." At the time, we were attending a church which had gone through a number of significant transitions which had left many feeling somewhat fragmented emotionally and spiritually. It was a feeling of disconnection and disorientation...a struggle to regain ones' footing; to reclaim ones' place.
It was around Easter and I was drawn to the story of the Crucifixion of Jesus from a perspective that I had never considered before. I began to study the sideline characters in this well known narratives ...the possible stories of individuals who garnered few eloquent sermons. These ordinary folks whose contributions remain on the sideline of of the most important titanic drama in human history.
It was their stories that engaged the imagination of my mind...
I started thinking about what it must have been like to be merely passing through Jerusalem and then suddenly conscripted, without the benefit of hire, to carry the cross of a man who was stumbling to His the death like an ordinary criminal.
Then there was Pilate's wife, a well to do lady. She had a nightmare about the man her husband was about to sentence to death. This nighttime terror haunted her soul's dreams and forced an urgent entreaty to warn Pilate about her apprehension.
Witness the women who were considered as little more than chattel to be owned by men...following at a distance, and watching the last gasping breath of the Son of God.
I thought of a rich man who gave up his burial plot for a bruised body to be laid...a body which had been publicly scorned by passersby.
As my thoughts wove around the potential stories of these individuals, I was struck by the remarkable experiences that were only available outside the crowded confines of the scriptural text. Lives whose contributions emerged within the margins and not on the central stage.
It was their position at the sidelines which afforded them the benefit of these unique and extraordinary moments.
But, why is it 
that so often we yearn for the extraordinary but strive to find it within the crowded confines of the norm? The middle place, the popular position, the cursed bane of compromise which robs us our uniqueness while promising us safety in numbers?
It is in this place of false security that we pay with hands outstretched; fiercely grasping the awful price required for our souls. Unaware that it is the one thing for which no earthly compensation is large enough to ransom.
In this trade, the devil laughs at our naivete. For he knows that we have not outgrown the proclivities of that tempestuous toddler, we have merely traded the newborns' scream for a dull, blunted soul searing roar.
A meager return for an immortal life which entered the world unfettered, knowing that the cry which brought it here was never meant to be imprisoned within the limiting confines of conformity. Nor could it be lulled by the lust for the limiting essential nature of personal fame. (italics added 2009)
And inside, the scream continues unabated...unheard by human ears, reeling with staggered desperation within the human heart. For it knows that it was sent on a unique mission. The scream bears silent witness to the inner desire to complete our unique mission in life with integrity, knowing that we enter into this life alone...and we we are all destined to leave it in the same fashion.
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Michael Jackson & Farah Fawcett...May their souls rest in peace.
Mouth picture courtesy of Phineas H's photostream on flickr.com
This entry is part of a larger series entitled..."What it Means..."
The story of the Crucifixion can be found in the Gospels of Mathew, Mark, Luke & John
Copyright 2008 Audu Real Estate All Rights Reserved
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