Tuesday, July 22, 2008

The Hell Fired Kiln

Ever feel like people are afraid of you? I do. It's happened on numerous occasions lately, way too many, in fact. It's as if… I don't know… I somehow catch people in the middle of something they think no one else can see they're doing or going through. It's starting to unnerve me. Mostly because I know it's not so much a matter of 'me' doing it as something just a tad bit stronger and wiser than me guiding my foot into my mouth for the sake of making a point to both those around me and myself.

Yet, at the same time, I almost feel like I am slipping away from myself, becoming yet another creature in the progression from who I was to who I will be. Loss, happiness, purpose, love, they all are a part of my life and they are twisting and pulling and mashing me between them, molding me into something I cannot fathom because for once in my life they are at balance with one another, communicating together and deciding how best to shape me to best withstand the firing of the kiln. I do not enjoy my future not being entirely within my control.

But where is my trust? Where is my faith? I spend so much time looking at things through my intellect that I have lost the nerve to focus with those other aspects of myself. Faith, trust, so easily misplaced and proven wrong; the ability to hold faithful is the most wondrous thing the guilty have because it is a remnant of innocence, it is evidence that one can regain a state of… for lack of a better word, purity.

How, you may ask, can one achieve something so far removed by both personal choice and outward force? It is against the nature of things for that which was once pure, now defiled, to ever be totally pure ever again. We may come through our fires with chips, cracks, and discolorations, my friends, but purity is not a matter of physicality it is a matter of mind, heart, and spirit.

If you look at the cycle of water, perhaps you shall see better what I mean. It falls from the sky, crystallized in its purest form. As it falls to earth, however, it gains dust and pollution on its journey only to land in filth upon the ground. It runs amuck upon the earth, filling with grime and chemicals and carcasses of all kinds. Then, however it finds its hell, is burned up into the atmosphere, the impurities it once acquired stripped away as it once again soars into the atmosphere in purity.

"But then the cycle begins again" you say? True, very true. It is the way of the Walk, no matter how desperately we strive to remain pure, we will always fail, and then God, in h is loving kindness, refines us once more and returns to us that which we had lost.

Perhaps, I have once again become an instrument for that process, perhaps something I am doing or have done has helped open someone's eyes to see that which they have closed themselves up tight against. I do not know.

Fear. It is the first thing we feel when someone holds us accountable, whether we know we have done everything perfectly or not. It is the human reaction to the thought of consequences, I suppose. So, what does that make me, pawn that I am? What is it I am and what am I becoming?

And why do I feel this terrible need to define it before I become myself?

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