You’ve got Style

We’ve all got out own - style, that is. Hair, personality, speech, thinking, clothes, car and ways of living.

What’s good for me is definitely not good for the gander - believe me. Whenever I try to slip into the shoes of my teenagers, I wipe out big-time. “Dad, you’ve got no style!” I hear. Wrong. I’ve got lots of style, but it just isn’t theirs! I watch the power of peer pressure and cringe at the way that things seem to gravitate to the lowest common denominator. Reminds me of a sign on a church billboard that my father saw once. “ALL LIQUIDS FIND THE LOWEST LEVEL. ALCOHOL TAKES YOU WITH IT”. Clever. True. Sad.

We need to identify our own style and take note of it, because style is important. No. Style is everything.

Like the way a woman walks and dresses and smiles and carries herself (her style) is who she is. Like the way a guy talks and thinks and acts (his style) is who he is. It’s the uniqueness that we are - individuals. Even a Coca Cola, Nike or Malboro advert that tempts us into a particular style tempts us to explore different ways of thinking and acting by giving us a style.

We get pushed around in our style by people, circumstances and things around us. When I was growing up I never wanted to wear shoes. Barefoot was my choice. Sandals if I really had to. And shoes - well I think I actually had to wear them sometimes, I think. Now that’s fixed. It’s just my style. I reckon if God birthed me with bare feet and I’m sure to be buried in barefeet, then the bits in between may as well be the same. Sorry Nike, no business here!

The clothes we wear contribute to our style. The toothbrush we use. The way we get to the airport. The people we want to associate with. What pushes our hot buttons. How we talk to people. It’s all our style. I’ve told the kids since they were knee-high-to-a-grasshopper to never buy anything advertised on TV. It will have to be over-priced, just to pay for the adverts. Common sense to me. And that’s my style.

I’ve got friends in different places around the world who live outside social norms. That’s their style. I spent some time at the notorious Centrepoint community in Albany in its heyday (in the days before Bert Potter got put away) and it morphed into other things. Their style was to let it all hang out. Basically a sex commune, with anti-establishment values, the community removed what they saw as the constraints of social and religious norms. That was their style.

Taggers have their own style. They’ve got their own culture and values, and they present themselves to the community in style. I don’t like it but I do recognise their style. Most of their work sucks, but a few taggers really do some great work, I reckon. Some of those sand sculptures, pavement paintings, mime artists and social artist teams have got real style.

My style is to shoot straight. No politics. No BS. Just get “down and dirty” with life. This style is not an excuse to be crude, or abrasive. Nor is it the right answer in all situations, but it is an exciting way to live. My teenage son was recorded on a video a few years answering a question from a mate of ours, Neville Logan. Nev asked him to talk about his Dad. “Well, Dad” he says “is never embarrassed, you know. Sometimes embarrasing, but never embarrassed”. That’s his take on my style.

Everyone has their own take on the PM’s style, or the style of the celebrities of the day. Yup style is everything, and God has His own style too.

In the Jewish language, the language of the bible, there are gazillions of unique words that describe the Lord’s style. They range from fluffy-duffy stuff, (like wonderful, loving and kind) to the practical (like creator, provider and the source of wisdom), but the one that always stands out to me is how He described Himself to Moses at the burning bush. In this setting God had just told Moses that He had a pretty nasty little task for him. Actually it was a pretty nasty BIG task, but that’s beside the point:

Moses said to God, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am . This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ”
Exodus 3:13-14a

Wow! What style!

I mean get this, the Creator of the universe brings the whole description of Himself down to just two words (and I think if I remember my bible studies correctly, it may even be one word in Hebrew) “I AM”. This is so cool.

Everyone is running around trying to get style, and God, who has all the style in the universe just says “I AM”. Talk about simplicity. So very profound. It makes all our scurrying around trying to BE something look frivilous, does it not?

The VICTUS IN AMBITUS way is to work out our style, and just DO IT . . . Hmmm, no sorry, that’s Nike’s one. I’ll try again . . . The VICTUS IN AMBITUS way is to work out our style, and just BE IT.