American Dream

Things are not as I thought they were.

All this time, I’ve internalized struggle as necessary. Both my faith and family values contextualized work against slavery with phrases like “working like a Hebrew slave.” You can imagine the range of acceptable toil within that frame. This American system seems to require working up towards your death.

But there’s another system “working;” a system of giving and receiving. An entirely different system unlike that which requires lending, borrowing, keeping your head down and playing by the rules until you amass enough wealth to change them. The only rule of this other system—this heavenly system— is

be of service—to God, yourself, others, the spirit of love. It is a balanced place that only takes what it gives.

No toil without rest.

All this time I thought that the walls I was using all my strength and energy to uphold were walls of protection. I thought the wall of degrees and titles could protect me from suffering indignity. That the wall of income could keep my children from fear and uncertainty. The wall of apparent perfection and unimpeachability could guard against filial disappointment. The wall of eternal struggle could keep this nation sputtering on.

But there are no walls in that other system—that heavenly system. There are only cycles of gifting; giving your gifts as freely as you receive the gifts of others—never ever looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I realized. I was not holding up walls of protection. I was keeping my cage intact.

Maybe rest, when done well, doesn’t just look like sleep. Maybe it looks more like letting the walls and the systems those walls uphold crumble.

Perhaps radical rest requires divesting from the system that only lends freedom when convenient for the maintenance of control. Divest from the system that keeps us working…

…working off a debt we may never repay because,

well,

we didn’t take out the loan in the first place.

You don’t need to borrow anything to be of service.

Today, I forgive all debt. I no longer owe anyone and no one owes me.

Every wall crumbling into earth. The only work that remains is to till all the new soil and make fertile ground for each one of us—not knowing what comes next, just knowing we are safe and kept and loved.

Knowing we are free.

I’m losing pieces of my mind trying to figure out when freedom became a radical idea;

trying to understand why America exists only in dreams.