Crooked or Straight?

Most of my life I’ve pretty much always been a straightlaced dude. At least on the surface. I took all the “no-no’s” I was told pretty seriously. Not sure why… fear of hell I suppose? But for whatever reason, I never really got into anything “naughty”. Of course there was the hidden. There always is.

Married young. Even “saved myself” for marriage! 

Never did “drugs”. Before I understood that alcohol was indeed a drug.

Missionary. To “unreached” people. Because apparently being the first white person with a bible makes them unreached? Still not sure I understand it. 

As far as conservative Evangelicalism was concerned, I was about as straight and narrow as one could get. Or at least according to how I was influenced to interpret Jesus’s words in Matthew (KJV, that is).

Boy, it seems the pendulum sure has swung the other direction!

Or at least according to how someone who still views life through a puritanical lens would see.

But my supposed deviation, seemingly due more to external life choices or my salty language vs. how, or whether, you love well, got me really thinking about that classic ending chapter containing the Sermon on the Mount. So I went ahead and picked up the good ol’ book again (Okay fine, I just read it on Biblegateway), for the first time in probably 7-8 years. 

And hot damn! Those words slap! I always knew Jesus was pretty rad.

Not gonna lie, it’s wild to read these words through an adjusted lens. Revisiting anything after that long I imagine would create a whole new perspective. And despite having read them over and over and over again for years, they certainly read differently. They’re deep. They’re profound.

The way I understood the straight and narrow was simple. The gate was Jesus Christ. The other side = Heaven. Apparently a prayer and attending church meant I was one of the “few”... and yet ironically with little regard to how my self righteousness impacted those around me. Doing a pretty poor job of following the words from Jesus’s mouth. Sure, I was doing all the “right” things externally in other people’s eyes, but I was miserable inside. 

And only in the last few years did I understand why I was miserable for so long. And it wasn’t all the things or reasons I thought it was… it was even more simple. 

It was me.

And the more I explore the deeper, oftentimes darker, parts of myself, I am met with … me. Just the “not so accepted” parts, or the shamed parts, or the neglected parts. And I am finding the more I allow myself to curiously explore; these aren’t just “demons”... they are me. I just never really allowed myself to look long enough in a mirror to realize it. 

This journey has me feeling more whole. More connected. Because I am learning to accept myself. To love myself. The parts that need it. The parts that haven’t had that chance. And better yet, to get to a place where we allow others to love those parts too… 

Sure coffee is great, but have you ever let someone in and they lavished your inner child with love and affection?

Maybe the straight & narrow gate is simply the entrance into our own soul. Which is ever harder to see & enter in a world of distractions & conformity. And why only few seem to find it. Because I’ll tell ya from some real recent first hand experience, it’s fuckin’ scary. And hard. 

But if the straight and narrow is some path for the Moral Majority, then I’ll take the crooked and wide all day everyday.

And all this shitstormed in my brain after looking intently at myself in the mirror of our “hell” bathroom,  while considering what I might need to process. So I thought I would have fun with it and share it with you all. The part I didn’t expect was for people to continue to straighten the mirror. Like, several times a week. The irony of it. So now I make it a point to go in that bathroom just to make sure it stays crooked, for now.

As a firm believer in collectivism, I believe that our ability to seek individuation and understand our whole selves, is a major contributor to our capacity to love and love well. Which should be the goal, right? I mean, Jesus seemed to think so.

So let’s meet ourselves, in order to meet others.

+Michael