I Am Not Sure I Am Allowed

There is a rule and nobody has ever said what it is.

That is the position, and I want to hold it up for a moment before we do anything with it, because when it is stated plainly it starts to look different.

You have a fire escape. It has a landing, and the landing has room on it, and you have thought several times about putting something out there.

And every time, a feeling arrives that says you are probably not allowed.

Not a letter. Not a clause anybody has shown you. Not a conversation with anybody in the building. A feeling, with the shape of a regulation, which arrives at the moment you consider acting and does not arrive at any other time.

You are not breaking anything by putting a pot outside your own window, and a rule nobody has ever stated has never once been a rule.

Now, let me be fair about the one real thing in there, because there is one and it deserves saying.

A fire escape has to work as a fire escape. Nothing that blocks the route, nothing that could not be stepped over, nothing that goes in the way of a door or the top of a ladder.

That is a real constraint and it is a sensible one and it rules out about four percent of what you were considering. A single pot against the wall, out of the walkway, is not in that category and never was.

So the actual rule, the one that genuinely exists, has already been satisfied by the thing you were going to do anyway.

Stand fast therefore in the liberty

There is a line in Galatians about staying free that is more energetic than most people notice.

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. (Galatians 5:1, King James Version)

Stand fast in the liberty.

Now, stand fast is a defensive instruction. It is what you say to somebody who is already in a position and is likely to give ground. It assumes that the freedom is currently held and is under some kind of pressure.

Which means the picture is not somebody trying to obtain liberty. It is somebody standing in it who is about to back out of it.

You are already standing in the thing that verse is protecting, and a liberty already held has never once needed to be applied for. Galatians 5:1 tells people to stand fast in something they possess, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an instruction about holding ground land on a woman at a window.

And look at the second half. Be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Entangled is a good word for what happens here. Not chained, not imprisoned. Entangled, which is what happens to a person who was walking freely and has got caught up in something that was lying about.

That is precisely what an unstated rule does. It does not stop you. It catches at you.

You are being warned about the sort of thing that catches rather than the sort that imprisons, and a feeling shaped like a regulation has never once been able to do more than catch at somebody. The Holy Spirit is the one who gets a person out of something they wandered into, and the written word says entangled rather than bound.

And notice the word again.

Be not entangled again. There is a history in that word. It assumes somebody who was in something, got out, and is now drifting back toward the same shape without noticing.

You were free of this at some point and have drifted back toward it, and a person returning to an old shape has never once been doing it on purpose. The Spirit of God is the one who notices the drift before the person does, and the word puts an again into the warning, which means it is a thing that happens to people who were already out.

Where the feeling actually comes from

Let me be practical, because I think knowing where this comes from will take most of its weight off.

That feeling is not information about your building.

It is a general purpose caution about doing anything visible in a shared space, and it will attach itself to whatever you happen to be considering. If it were not the fire escape, it would be something else.

You could test it. Think of putting a chair out there instead, or a mat, and see whether the same feeling arrives. It will, at about the same strength, which tells you it is not about pots.

You are dealing with a general caution wearing the costume of a specific rule, and a feeling that attaches to whatever comes along has never once been about the thing it landed on. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person the difference between a fact and a habit of mind, and Galatians 5:1 warns about the sort of thing a person gets tangled in rather than the sort they get told about.

And here is the practical bit, which is very short.

If there genuinely is a rule, somebody will say so. That is how rules work in buildings. There will be a note, or a word from somebody, or a line in something you signed.

And at that point you will move the pot, and it will take about four seconds, and nothing whatsoever will have gone wrong.

You are able to act now and adjust later if anybody ever says anything, and a pot that can be moved in four seconds has never once been a risk anybody needed to think about for months. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a person act without certainty in front of them, and the written word tells people to stand fast rather than to wait for confirmation.

Put one out and leave it overnight

So here is the assignment, and the overnight part is the whole of it.

Put one pot out there today and leave it out overnight.

One pot, against the wall, well out of the walkway. Nothing near the ladder and nothing anybody would have to step over.

You are able to do a thing that satisfies the only rule that actually exists, and one pot against a wall has never once blocked anybody's route anywhere. Galatians 5:1 says stand fast in the liberty, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that window with a woman setting something down on a landing.

And leave it overnight. Do not bring it in at dusk.

Because bringing it in is the entanglement. It is the move that says this is provisional, that it is out on sufferance, that it is here only while nobody has noticed. A pot that comes in every evening is not out there at all.

Leave it, and go to bed, and in the morning there will have been a night in which a pot stood on your fire escape and nothing happened.

You are able to let something stay out where it was put, and one night of a pot standing on a landing has never once been the thing anybody objected to. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman not going back to the window, and the word says be not entangled again, which is about the small returning move rather than about the first one.