New Rules

Which New York City demographic group has the highest rate of new Aids cases?  The answer may surprise you – single women between the ages of forty and fifty.  Role reversals have now come home in ways one didn’t imagine.  Child abusers are of both genders, sex molesters can be young, bright, beautiful, and representative of the posters which adorned the walls of my friends when I was in junior high-school.  The stereo types still dominate, but they are no longer the absolute rule.
 
Do we need community?  Some don’t think so.  Cyber, virtual, sex is on the rise.  We walk with Ipods at our sides and music in our ears.  We converse through computers in ways which require faith.  With trust, and an incredible degree of certainty, we talk with people we have never met.  We exchange views and take actions based on characters which appear on our screens.
 
We live in a world with new rules. 
 
Last night I listened to an aspiring Japanese singer playing with musicians from Brazil and the hither lands of the US, bringing a unique sound not quite pop, a long way from fusion, but eerily beautiful in its own way.  The venue was a small stage on the lower east side of New York.  Nobody in the group lives in New York but they resonated with a New York crowd.
 
We live in a world with new rules.
 
I wouldn’t be surprised to read a story of how “seven women will gang up on one man, saying, ‘We'll take care of ourselves, get our own food and clothes.  Just give us a child.  Make us pregnant so we'll have something to live for!’” (Isaiah 4.1)  There isn’t anything consistent with the new rules paradigm.
 
In the chaos of today, it’s a new world.  Strange things happen.  Today’s strange things can become tomorrow’s norm.  We hold the ability and freedom to help create this world.  We can be the “new” messengers of hope, filled with compassion, mercy, and love.  We can make these elements part of the new rules.