Glory

I've been rereading The Allure of Hope by Jan Meyers, for what is probably the 6th time. This thought struck me today:

Glory asks something of us. Our hearts say, "Leave us alone; we're fine. Please don't unveil our faces, because we're not sure how the glory will be handled." It might be too much. We would rather have the comfort of a marred painting than deal with the brillance of the original. The beauty of revealed hope is often met with such distain.

I would welcome a discussion surrounding this unsettling thought from Ms. Meyers. 

Unfiltered

The remaining sludge and sediment from a batch of beer I brewed.

When brewing beer there is always sediment left in the fermentation bucket that you have to  avoid getting into your bottles. You can put your beer through a secondary fermentation process that brings about clarity to the beer and decreases the sediment even further. I usually skip the latter step because I am able to drink my beer a few weeks sooner. However, I also leave the last bit of beer in the bottle as to not ingest the sediment I missed. It feels like it ruins the finish of a otherwise delightful quaff.

I was thinking about the accuracy of my blog title. Why do I usually (always) have  filter? Is it because I am using discretion and I want to be tactful? Sure. Is it because I'm hesitant to be brutally honest, because I don't want to hurt someone's feelings? That's probably the truest reason the blog got it's name. But lately I've become more aware that I filter my words because I don't want others to know that I'm needy, and messy, and scared. I filter so that everyone will think I'm competent and strong and independent, and just fine. I filter so that no one can really know my heart. I don't think it's going to work much longer. That makes me angry, because I'd rather feel angry than scared.

Further unfiltered: this is what I thought about in church yesterday as I was profusely disrupted by 2 of the songs we sang, and started thinking about the idea of surrender. I'm sure there's another blog post in the works on that topic.

Choosing Death

I choose death every day. I don't have to, but I succumb to it. I could choose life if I wanted, yet I trade down. I think it's because I don't hate death the way I should.

We go through life looking for greener grass, believing that the choice we have is life and better life. I think it's darker than that. We don't want to sit in the reality that we live in a world that isn't as it should be, so we pretend that it's really okay. In pretending that it's okay we don't properly long for it to be better; there are no birth pains. We live with a constant epidural. I guess longing and what we do with longing has been on my mind lately.

Every time I choke back desire I choose death. When I want to connect with someone and I pick up the TV remote instead of my cell phone, I choose death. When in my mind I spew out contempt towards the person I wanted to connect with, believing that they don't care about me, I choose death. When I spew hatred at myself, thinking I'm too much or not enough, I choose death again. Choosing death is choosing to shut down feeling alive, the kind of alive that it meant to remind us that better life is coming.

I have friends who are currently experiencing the hard sucker punches of life. They are lonely, they are scared, they worry, there's uncertainty, there's sorrow - everything in their circumstances screams at them to find a way to shut it all down. Like me, many of them do. Honestly, I'm not sure I want to enter into what they're feeling, because I might have to bear a taste of their agony. Maybe I can try to fix it for them, or give them words to placate and minimize their experience. Maybe I can just not even ask. I can choose death.

Or . . . I can get angry at the injustice, weep for the losses, long for the hideous pain of labor to be over.

If I choose life I will become acutely aware of my shortcomings, my weakness, my neediness. If I choose life I'll need a Savior.