Is it possible that
being on the inside
leaves you out of the loop?
What if the margins
aren’t narrow?
What if that space of exclusion
is also a position of perspective?
What if being shut out
allows you to understand the insiders
better than they understand themselves?

Why do so many seek the safety
of that inner circle anyway?
Don’t we know that the circles
not only keep others out
but also the air?
Haven’t we learned that
it’s on the edge of circles
that hate makes its home?
So even if you weren’t among the ones
who put the circle in place,
by allowing it to linger,
don’t you carry the burden
of responsibility as well?

What if who we are
doesn’t end at the barriers
of our own skin?
What if sin is believing
that you can put the puzzle together
with only the pieces that belong to you?
What if heaven is the moment you realize
that none of us can get there alone?
What if the only true freedom
lies in the willingness to
fight against that which imprisons
someone else?

And what if these all questions
are a matter of life and death?
Or is it a matter of dying to live?
After all, didn’t the Nazarene say
we must lose our life in order to find it?
Haven’t all the sages said the solitary self
must perish for the larger we to live?

If that is true
then let’s widen the circle
until it breaks!
For as long as the circle exists
pieces and parts of ourselves
will always lie on the other side
of the line.

So let us push, pull,
twist and tear,
dig underneath
and climb over the top,
do whatever it takes to meet each other
face to face.
And having found each other,
let us stare
and struggle,
fight and forgive,
call in and call out,
until “me” and “you”
dissolves into “us.”
Is there any other way we become whole?