The Next Border to Cross

I have begun looking at activities from the metaphor of Border Crossings: where and what are the boundaries (real and artificial) that we or I have established in our living and in our professions? I look at all of the rubrics of my profession (I am an executive coach). I must not cross into the land of the spiritual - at least I think that is the unspoken mandate. People I coach must be allowed to be their own person; free from moral challenge from (especially) their coach. But it seems to me to be an artificial barrier. It relegates people into feelingless and flat doings not beings.

The question becomes how and where do I cross the borders? Do I need some coyote to lead me across this border? Do I sneak across under the cover of night or do I brazenly flaunt my rebellious character in front of the cameras and guards? Hey, I regularly cross the skin color line and the homo-hetero line - they aren't a challenge anymore! Every PC do-gooder has done those. And the political Hillarobama righteousness is even beginning to be acceptable - gosh how these walls are falling!

But the spiritual/moral boundary (unless you are willing to be a conservative, right wing fundamentalist - for God and for Country) - that one must not be touched. That one is verboten. See, we dare not think of what it means to be economically successful in spiritual terms, because that means we might have to think about the women in the sweat shops just across the border of El Paso and Nogales who assemble parts at unthinkably low wages. That means we have to consider that our smart use of vegetable fuels for our oh-so-PC hybrid cars means that the Mexican farmer whose balanced protein formerly came from corn and beans now must eat ramen noodles instead of his own corn. Oh, and we dare not talk about Jesus of Nazareth, that radical great great great grandson of a Moabite refugee intermarriage (Oh did we forget that too?), this potentially illegitimate son of a teenager, who dared talk to women, children, tax-collectors and heathen, and who dared to call the ruling power elite "vipers!"

I am a border crosser. I am a follower of that rebel. I choose to call the question. I dare to taunt the guard enforcing his arbitrary boundary. I can't stay quiet any longer.

This trip is not a metaphor. This trip is my coming out party. Bring it on! Where is the next line? If someone must be the first to step there, let it be me! Here am I Lord, take me!