Rebellion

“To me it’s so simple, that life should be lived on the edge of life. You have to exercise rebellion. To refuse to taper yourself to rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge, and then you are going to live your life on the tightrope.”

- Phillipe Petit, “Man on Wire”

My husband and I watched the film Man on Wire last night. It is the amazing story of Philippe Petit, a French tightrope walker who dared to walk between the two World Trade Center towers in August 1974. He saw a news article as a young man reporting on the construction of the towers in New York, and from then on they became “his” towers. He knew that his life goal would be to walk between them. At the age of 24 he did just that, with much planning and a team of associates who helped him sneak the equipment into the towers and set up the line throughout the night. The story is one of profound beauty and meaning. One of his friends who was interviewed said that for Phillipe, “every day was a work of art.” Seeing this man perched on a three-quarter inch cable thousands of feet above New York City is just that.

I have been thinking a great deal lately about what it means to rebel. Mainly, to rebel, as Phillipe refers to it, against the status quo, against the mundane, and against others expectations of you. As I am slowly learning how to let go and trust the Lord in His calling on my life, I am finding that when you make a decision that is outside the realm of others programmed expectations or cultural norms, people don’t know how to respond. Our culture dictates to us how to live our lives, and it is a strong prescriptive- go to school, go to college, get a job, work like mad, make more money, buy more stuff, work even more,  move “up” in the social food chain, keep running on the hamster wheel. It is a seriously tough thing to jump off. Who will catch me? Where will I land?  How bad will it hurt? These are all questions I’ve asked myself lately.

One thing I’ve noticed is that no one who accomplished anything great in their lives followed the rules to do it. The rules don’t get you anywhere. Once you can color outside the lines, you see that the lines weren’t helping you to be creative.  I’m not presuming that we should chuck all common sense to the wind, but we must ask ourselves what kind of life we want to live. One that is safe? Predictable? Secure? Or one that is risky, adventurous and involves a serious possibility of falling down hard? I’m beginning to realize that this is the life God is calling me into. I want to live my life on the tightrope.  I want to follow the narrow path that God has for me, focus intently on it, and experience the exhilaration that comes from it, all the while knowing that if I miss a step and fall He will be right there to catch me.

Rebellion against this world is obedience to God.