I am slowly living back through so many things but on a different level. Like a giant spiral of translucent life in which I am passing back through things I've already experienced, but now colored by the new place in time and space. Rejection of things I had rejected. Embracing of things I had embraced. Having reactions to things and remembering having the same reactions before. Understanding what I had felt then on a younger shallower level and seeing again on an older more experienced level why I had gone that way. It's almost like reliving my life as a wiser person...yet turning out to be the exact same person. I see how I got here and I am choosing to do it again.
It's a reaffirmation really of who I am and who I am made to be. It's good. And I am choosing good. I have had enough of the fake and less than...again. I am gravitating toward the real and more...again. It looks from the outside so much like going the other way. But there is peace here. I can't quite put my finger on it yet, but I'm following that peace.
I have a friend that I often argue with...not angry fighting, but just engaged debate. This debate has helped me. Like iron sharpening iron, it is a grating and clanging process, but it leaves a finer edge. He says some things that I do not agree with and that I wouldn't say, but I understand what he means. It's all about perspective. One has to be in another's place to see from that perspective. I always did understand what he means on a certain level, though I constantly take exception with it for good reason. But in this place right now, I can feel affinity for his statements so much more than just assenting to it logically. I guess I'm saying that I feel it right now. I'm following what feels good and right.
I'm moving away from what hurts. I've tried to find the way to a place of peace again for a long time and all I keep finding is injury. I'm going to think on the pure, holy, worthy things. But that won't take me where most think it will. It didn't before. I don't deny my darkness. It is part of me and will be me, but I am accepting it and moving toward a place where the darkness is acceptable as part of the whole. I will never be at peace in the places that I was not made for. I learned this early on and had somehow flopped back out of the water where I have floundered and flopped trying to walk on fins and trying to breathe air through gills. And then upon strangling and tripping I began flopping about looking for the water again. I think I have found a trickle. Maybe a puddle, but there seems to be flow and life there and I'm looking for deeper water. I'm diving in, going deep, hearing that fluid rush. Get me in the water!
Get me out of the Keep (mixing metaphors, I know). I need to find that dewy wild place beyond the wall where I can crash down among the lilies and find the one waiting for me there. When I catch that scent, hear those pipes, I'm gone man! Watch how fast I cut it all away.
Showing posts with label cutting away. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cutting away. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The Pearl
Here goes another post that is exactly what I created this blog for. I don't really have a point starting out, but will probably have found it by the end of the post.
The Pearl (of Great Price) is part of a Biblical simile for "the Kingdom of Heaven". Jesus spoke a lot of these kind of similes. Usually, I've read it and glossed over it. I've even paused and thought about it for a few minutes, trying to understand the whole simile. But mostly, it has been one of those things I knew, but didn't think much about. Then last night, I was talking with a friend and he started talking about a burden he has. You know, the kind of thing you know something nees to be done about and you just can't get out of your head. He was actually very articulate about it, though he kept thinking that he wasn't making himself clear. It was all about this deep thing he wanted people to understand. A very Contemplative kind of thing (though he didn't use that word) about the nature of life and God and relationships.
As he was talking, I started to get this impression of the pearl and the story that when a man finds it, he goes and sells everything he owns so that he can buy it. And it seemed to me to make sense finally. This was the reason the Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl or great price that when a man finds it he goes and sells everything he owns to buy it. My friend had seen the pearl and was so desperate to have it that nothing would be more valuable. He would cut away everything in his life to possess it. And he knows that others would value it as he does if they could but find it! He has understood the meaning of life in a quite literal sense. Imagine that! It wasn't so hard to figure out afterall! Perhaps others have seen it in the mud and dirt and kicked right over it without catching its ethereal glint because they are so preconvinced that the meaning of life is far more complex and/or elusive.
What's more, as I realized this, I instantly started to apply it to myself and a moment of clarity struck me where many things made sense...in a gossamer kind of way, like a break in the clouds on an overcast night reveals objects in the sudden moonglow that fades as quickly as it appears. I have also found this pearl, but while he was still marveling over it, I had long since run off to gather the means to buy it. This has taken a lot longer than I expected, and in the process I had almost forgotten that I had come here simply in order to sell what I owned and gain the pearl!
So that's what this was about...I remember the pearl. And just as he was cutting away, selling what he owned, so was I. But I still didn't have enough. Now what remained to be sold was far harder to unload and far harder to part with...In fact, I hadn't even considered it a possession. It was just something that has always been there, like my hair, or shirt. But now, I realize it may have some value...perhaps much more than I anticipated...afterall, it is among the last to go and therefore the bulk of the price is in hand. Since value is in the eye of the beholder, though it gain a pittence in the market, that pittence, hardest to come by and the last that is needed to gain the pearl, makes the sold object the most valuable of all!
The Pearl (of Great Price) is part of a Biblical simile for "the Kingdom of Heaven". Jesus spoke a lot of these kind of similes. Usually, I've read it and glossed over it. I've even paused and thought about it for a few minutes, trying to understand the whole simile. But mostly, it has been one of those things I knew, but didn't think much about. Then last night, I was talking with a friend and he started talking about a burden he has. You know, the kind of thing you know something nees to be done about and you just can't get out of your head. He was actually very articulate about it, though he kept thinking that he wasn't making himself clear. It was all about this deep thing he wanted people to understand. A very Contemplative kind of thing (though he didn't use that word) about the nature of life and God and relationships.
As he was talking, I started to get this impression of the pearl and the story that when a man finds it, he goes and sells everything he owns so that he can buy it. And it seemed to me to make sense finally. This was the reason the Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl or great price that when a man finds it he goes and sells everything he owns to buy it. My friend had seen the pearl and was so desperate to have it that nothing would be more valuable. He would cut away everything in his life to possess it. And he knows that others would value it as he does if they could but find it! He has understood the meaning of life in a quite literal sense. Imagine that! It wasn't so hard to figure out afterall! Perhaps others have seen it in the mud and dirt and kicked right over it without catching its ethereal glint because they are so preconvinced that the meaning of life is far more complex and/or elusive.
What's more, as I realized this, I instantly started to apply it to myself and a moment of clarity struck me where many things made sense...in a gossamer kind of way, like a break in the clouds on an overcast night reveals objects in the sudden moonglow that fades as quickly as it appears. I have also found this pearl, but while he was still marveling over it, I had long since run off to gather the means to buy it. This has taken a lot longer than I expected, and in the process I had almost forgotten that I had come here simply in order to sell what I owned and gain the pearl!
So that's what this was about...I remember the pearl. And just as he was cutting away, selling what he owned, so was I. But I still didn't have enough. Now what remained to be sold was far harder to unload and far harder to part with...In fact, I hadn't even considered it a possession. It was just something that has always been there, like my hair, or shirt. But now, I realize it may have some value...perhaps much more than I anticipated...afterall, it is among the last to go and therefore the bulk of the price is in hand. Since value is in the eye of the beholder, though it gain a pittence in the market, that pittence, hardest to come by and the last that is needed to gain the pearl, makes the sold object the most valuable of all!
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