What is Our Day to Day Experience of Living in the World?

This is a question I have pondered for decades. I do wonder if we really are “not of this world”,  even as He is not of this world, (and I believe those words to be true), then what is our day to day experience as we  try to engage in life. My thought is that we would have an on going awareness (however slight at times, yet persistent), that we are from somewhere else and that we are merely strangers and aliens living in a foreign land. It seems to me that we would most often have some level of “disconnect”, even as we try to connect.

My main interest at this time is not to discuss morality. I am not interested in bickering over what we should do and what we should not do but rather my focus is on the inner experience. I keep asking, “What do I truly feel as I live each day”?  I wonder what others feel?  I know many understand this piece of theology but does our day to day experience support it.

I think of lines from a poem by William Stafford. The poem’s opening lines presents the dilemma of being somewhat disoriented in the world.

“If you were exchanged in the cradle , and your mother died and you don’t know who your father is, and no one told you the story of what happened….” 

Perhaps, metaphorically,  part of that story is that we are orphans in the world.  And when the trials come in the form of wind and rain we feel outside the crowds of people.

“And when the great wind comes and the robberies of the rain and you stand on the corner shivering and you watch the people go by and you wonder at their calm.”

I know I often do this. I watch people. They seem more connected to each other than I am. “I wonder at their calm”, their apparent easiness.

And as I watch these people and feel disconnected I also realize that they, “miss the whisper then runs every day in my mind”.

And that whisper is a question I ask myself, “Who are you really wanderer?”

“And the answer I have to give no matter how cold and dark and dreary the world around me is,  maybe I’m a king”.

Now, I know I am not a king. But I do know there is some divine royalty in my blood  and that just might be why I can’t quite belong and feel at home.