Breaking Stereotypes

I find hilarity in breaking stereotypical views, and yet in the same sense I see in it such beauty. In many aspects of my own life I have consistently tried to break stereotypical views, while at the same time trying to show others that we do not have to fit into such molds that people make us into. Yet still, I try to show others that people are not always as they seem, that they are really the same as we ourselves are. All of us are people; we have the same feelings of regret, fear, stress, and pain. Our experiences vary but we are all indeed people and all part of a beauty greater than ourselves.


While on the outside I have tried to break stereotype and show others to do the same, I find myself somehow still fitting some of the stereotypes. As a Christian, young woman trying to grow up in a secular culture, where Christianity is looked down on in many areas, I find it increasingly more difficult to live as such. People love God but hate the people claiming to do things in his name, and they have much right to do so. In the hilarity of breaking such stereotypes of Christians being hypocritical, judgmental, and condemning, I find myself in some ways living up to such stereotypes that I try so hard to break. So, if you saw me walking down the street, in my “hardcore” style of dress, with my dark makeup, lip ring and whatever I feel like wearing for the day; you would NOT look at me and think to yourself, “good girl” or “Christian image”.

In this way I have broken a stereotype, I have a tattoo (heaven forbid) and piercings, because this is the funny part of me that likes to shock people, or make them rethink their stereotypes. On the outside I have attempted to break an image of Christians all looking the same, acting the same, and thinking the same, but on the inside is a different matter. While I may look like the type of Christian that if put into a category by looks, would be called “liberal”, on the inside I struggle with the same things many Christians find themselves struggling with. I speak of the love of God and his son dying for me, not to condemn me but to bring me to him. While turning my back and many times nearly pushing new Christians away from the faith, because I expect them to be “perfect” the instant they come to know Christ. Forgetting my own faults and failures, I attempt to pick a speck from a friend’s eye with a giant plank in my own. And for this I am saddened, but also for this I have great joy, because I remember in such times that my goodness and my love, is not of myself but comes from an amazing God. This is the very reason I can preach the good news!

The thing is I am a hypocrite and without God I am judgmental, and I do condemn people. This jar into reality is why people come to know Christ, not because of how good we show them we are, but because we show we are real people, with real struggles, just like their own. So we relate in our humanity.

 I am friends with a girl whose favorite color is pink, because we realize it does not matter how we look, but what matters is much deeper. So my hardcore style and her very cute girly style does not get in the way of our strong bonds as friends. God has brought us together, because often times God has greater plans then our own, he sees beyond the way we dress and do our makeup. He sees our true personalities and our honest broken and bruised hearts.

 We are all in need of a savior, a savior to break the walls we build between one another. To bring us into the one body we were intended to be in from the very beginning of time.

Rain

Pouring

         down

The smell of wet dirt and plants
Fill the
Air
Letting the world
Know it was
There
Bringing life to the wild

Rock and sand cover roadways
The washing away
Is uneasy
To comfort

Needing to
Clear out,
Destroy what has been piling up-
The Old
In order for
The New
To come in,
Take over

All of my world
Covered
By a moist layer
Awaiting
The rising sun
To begin a
New

By: Reanna Marchman

Observation and Response

By: Reanna Marchman


Outside the cement walls
Man has planted nature
Green leaves
Sprouting life
To blossoms of gold, lavender, and pearl

A scent of honey and perfume fill my senses
Drawing in a flood of life
Buzzing about
Bees pollinate the flowers
Gliding
Butterflies feed on the nectar

Harmonizing
In their labor
Knowing their purpose in life
Working together
To create a cycle
Birds wait above in the trees of green
To consume the workers

None of the creatures question what they should do
They intrinisically knowing what they were made for-
Their lives purpose created
Internally within

Quietly I observe and learn from the ‘lesser’ life forms
Wondering how we have become
     SO

Disconnected

To nature
To our purpose

Yet the idea that I can rationalize this
That I can observe
And learn
That I can choose
To follow my purpose or
To walk away
A profound mystery in humanity

A Drawing of a Cadaver

By: Reanna Marchman


A lone dead tree

Grey and shaded in

Still taking root into the hard dry ground

Stretching its branches to the sky



The light shines upon it

Longing to give life

Living water is what’s needed

Brought by a cloud covered sky

Which masks the scorching sun



The green-blue sky of this tree’s world

The orange and red sun

Strain to give color to the picture



But the tree is what I

Long to see life and color in.

Learning to See Things Through Another Set of Eyes

By: Reanna Marchman

I am the gun metal colored lizard
Running over the concrete into the planter
Hiding amongst the forest of plants
Covered from the squelching sun

Staring at the human
Staring at me
Bobbing up and down
Moving slightly
Hiding again amongst the towering green

I am the skateboarder
Pushing across the concrete
Breathing the air as it hits my face
Cooled by the wind against the beating sun

Looking at the world
Looking at me
Watching it stream past
Balancing gracefully
Pushing again against gravity and air.

A Peak Through The Fissure Between Two Worlds

By: Reanna Marchman


A hazy cloud cover

          hovering

Over vegetated mountains

Blurring

            Down into the troposphere below



A Radiant blue background

             With a white grey smudge

The light shines through where these two worlds meet

      Like mercury paint fading into an azure painted canvas



The two

Blending and meshing into one another

As the precipitation melts

     Down

           Into the green earth

                                  below



             Celestial illumination

Where atmosphere meets Adam’s ale.

True Worship

True Worship   By: Reanna Marchman


There’s nothing we can do to gain this amazing love

Nothing can be enough
And at the same time
We do not need to do anything more for it’s freely given.

We rejoice
We worship
We praise
In multiple forms
In everyday life
A constant unending worship to the Creator

We live it,
We don’t just sing it,
Everyday.

Our life is the song, the sacrifice
And we just haven’t written all the lyrics yet.
We are His Poema.

Finding Color in a Black and White World

Finding Color in a Black and White World
By: Reanna Marchman

Sitting in the vast classroom
Hearing the waves of typing fingers
And shuffling papers at each new slide
Cued for which moments to be silent, which to laugh
Entertainment in these theater seats, is learning.
Professor and students performing their roles.

Becoming aware of the world around us in a class room

Outside the walls nothing is so structured
Nothing is as black and white as the words on the page
People are messy,
Much more like an abstracted painting,
Which contains more colors than black and white.
The mind is more mindful than books and lectures.

Becoming aware of the world through experience

Intelligence is now- memorization and regurgitation.
Success is measured by how much you do.
The mind swirls with pressure, anxieties, and worries.
We forget we are human beings
Not human DOINGS.
Lives are fragile – handle with care.
May our minds be more mindful of the colors around us.

Becoming aware of the awareness of the black and white- and choosing more colors.