Trouble Maker or Agent of Change

This celtic maze was crafted at Shadow Rock UMC in Phoenix AZ

When I was in school - kindergarten all the way through high school graduation, I was not one to conform to teacher expectations. 

In kindergarten, I fell madly in love with a blond curly head and wanted to spend my day hugging him while the teacher read about the house with no windows or doors, with a star in the center - which turned out to be an apple.

In first grade, the teacher had to leave the room for a few minutes giving the order for us to all work. Some of us talked away. When she returned she asked who talked .I did not fess up and got my name on the board and my parents called.

In 7th grade, in a science class where the teacher was talking on and on, I was also talking on an on.   When she swatted me on the head with a ruler, I stood up and told her where to go and was sent to the office.

In 8th grade, three of us made polka dotted circle skirts in home economics  and wore them every day for a week to protest happy homemaker stereo-typing..

In 10th grade, the English teacher annoyed me by how he played favorites to the point where I wrote my assigned essay about it. I had to show my "F" to my mother who wrote to him, "This too shall pass - we hope". He wrote back, "To err is human, to forgive divine." 

By the time I was a senior, the 60's revolution had begun . I wrote a speech about the existence of racism in my area. I got an "F".

I danced right into the 60's revolutions. Gave my whole life to its grand purposes. Woven in and through it all was a disregard for my responsibility to myself and the human relationships in my life

It was like this: When I was very young, at a family picnic, I ate a chunk out of the center of a watermelon. Much to my grandfather's dismay, he could not get me to regret my action. Even today, I'm not sure if the lesson was that I should say, "I did it" with resolve, or if it shouldn't be I who eats the sweet center of the fruit.

This is the paradox and the dilemma. Shadow is always present. The same energy of social responsibility shows up  as reactionary rebellion or as a pioneering response. 

I decide its purpose all alone, finally - nowhere to look for the right or wrong in what I have done. Time will decide.

Reflect on an energy which has been part of you ever since you can remember. How have your actions danced between reaction and response through your life's time?