In irony someone recently told be how empty their life feels currently. How ironic right? The irony lies in the fact that I was feeling the same way. For exactly the same reasons. But I don't believe they knew this. In prayer for this person, and myself, God gave me understanding. Applicable towards 'our' kind of emptiness. In the parable of a pot being made by a potter.
The Steps involved in a pot: 1 - Get a lump of cold hard clay 2 - Knead it, warm it up, get it ready 3 - Secure it on the wheel 4 - Center its mass 5 - Put force into it, shape it, and mold it to a shape 6 - Dry it and glaze it 7 - Fire it 8 - Use it [after it cools]
The understanding applies in the following way. A pot can only feel empty when its a pot. Right? Obvious... Maybe not when you're a pot. As a lump of clay being kneaded, cleansed, spun and shaped, the clay is not empty. It is simply clay. Duh.
As the form and purpose take form however the clay begins to feel its calling. Its purpose. What where once dreams are suddenly tangible. A formless mass fantasizing of holding water, to quenching thirst, and spreading life. Those dreams are now more than that, they are now the nature of the pot itself. Now the dreams are of sanctification. Of being used. Fulfilling its purpose. It's a pot right? But its not being used as a pot
It's purpose is to hold water... But it's dry.
It's designed to give quenching water to dry lips... But it's dry.
It's desire is to spread life... But it's dry.
Dry and lifeless.
Longing to be used Waiting to be used Praying to be used Looking for any instance to just be used!
Questions begin. Am I still wet? Do I need to dry more? Have I been glazed? Haven't I been through the fire?
The white hot, cleansing, nothing impure left behind sort of fire. The fire of the kiln. God's fire. Where even clay glows white hot with God's purifying heat.
Even after a piece of clay acquires the shape of a pot, its not really ready to be a pot. I mean, I look like a pot. I'm made of what pots are supposed to be made of.Sure, everyone calls it a pot. I even call myself a pot. She calls herself a pot.
Which ever step we may be in, who knows, maybe we're cooling off in the kiln. Sitting in the sun to dry, still wet and more vulnerable than we were as a lump of clay. Standing on the shelf, waiting to be sold. Maybe still on the wheel, the potters hands still wrapping us, shaping us. Most exciting of all, maybe we're under a faucet as God's hand turns on the water.
Where ever we are, we are in God's hands. Under His supervision. Being formed, prepared, sent out. Or maybe we're about to be used and we don't even know it.
If we are willing to serve, God will use us. He will use us when we're ready. He's given us a purpose, a passion, the ability, He's given us His ability. We'll be used in beautiful ways to show God, to give life
We'll be filled with the Spirit We'll pour out the Spirit on dry souls, quenching their thirst. We'll be carried, full of life, to places once scourged by drought and rainless days.
There, there we will spread the life within us, Being filled continually, Pouring ourselves out upon the heart-seeds of the lost, dead, and dying, Giving life, not giving cause its ours to give. Giving because its been given to us.
Because after all, that is what we were made to do....
Isaiah 29:16-
You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, “You did not make me”? Can the pot say to the potter, “You know nothing”?
Isaiah 45:9-
“Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘The potter has no hands’?
Isaiah 64:8-
Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
I love to draw faces. I've drawn them for years now it seems. One thing I love about every single face i've drawn wheter it was captured in my rendition are the imperfections in each face. I remember when I first started drawing back in junior high, I wanted both eyes to be exactly the same shape, the nose and lips to be perfectly symetrical along with the ears, eyebrows, everything. Everything needed to be perfect, and every person looked so fake so dead, so plastic, so unreal. So I finally decided to draw what I saw, even though it bothered me beyond reasonable measures. But the life in the people began to take shape, the eyes that didn't match came alive and the lips looked like they held words. It was so awesome to see that. Then I went to art class where Michelangelo dictated the perfect porportions of the human face spacings. It seemed so retarted to me to make everyone the perfectly spaced model in the books. I did realize though, why all of the dudes and girls in his drawings look like the same person, its because they were, throw around a hair dew and mona lisa becomes michelangelo, or david, or any other person he drew. I've become a people watcher, I will be entertained for hours, especially in an airport, watching people. There faces, their build, their walk, especially there eyes. Unfortunately I get caught quite a bit, which provides the awkward moment of 'you have cool eyes... and yeah i've been staring at you for 5 minutes straight' apparently it bothers quite a few people.
I wonder a lot about whether it's the marksmanship of God or the infection of sin. Whether God would create us 'perfectly' or rather he sees us as a 'perfect masterpiece' of his hands. Like a handmade vase that was thrown on a wheel, the curves and shape is amazing and slightly off but its a work of art by a person, not a pressure molded reproduction that stacks perfectly together. If you ever hold a hand thrown mug in your hand it seems to fit and mold to your hand because it was made by hands, it was designed to fit, to be held. Our abnormalities, although asymetrical, show the handprints of a creater. I think we as humans, each made by hand where designed to fit into the hands that made us, to be held, to be filled, to used for our intended, unique purposes. To be sanctified.
I HAVE MANY SCARS. SOME ARE COMICAL IN MEMORY MOST ARE NOT. MOST ARE HAUNTING EVEN DEMONIC IN THEIR PRESENCE. SOME KNOW, MOST DONT THOGH, ABOUT THE HISTORY BEHIND MY SCARS.
THE ONES I LAUGH ABOUT ARE THOSE I GOT BEING A COUNTRY BOY WITH TWO OLDER BROTHERS. FROM MISCHIEVOUS EXPEDITIONS GONE WRONG, FROM SPORTS, OR FROM BROTHERLY SQUABBLES (SOMEHOW THE BATHROOM DOOR HIT MY FACE...).
MY NEWEST SCAR DOWN MY CHEST IS THE TOKEN OF SICKNESS. FROM HEART SURGERY. HOPEFULLY THE FIRST AND LAST, BUT UNLIKELY TO BE THE ONLY REMEMBRANCE OF THIS HELL.
THE OTHERS ARE VERY DIFFERENT. I WISH I KNEW, BUT I DON'T KNOW, WHY THE FEELING OF PAIN, THE SIGHT OF BLOOD, WAS THERAPEUTIC TO ME IN MY EARLIER TEENAGE YEARS. DESPITE MY LACK OF UNDERSTANDING AND REGRET, IT WAS THERAPY, TO SOME DEGREE, IT MADE LIFE MORE BEARABLE, MORE ENDURABLE. SUBSEQUENTLY I HAVE ROUGHLY TWENTY-NINE SCARS ON MY ARMS FROM MY SOPHOMORE YEAR IN HIGH SCHOOL. ADDITIONALLY, I HAVE ONE FROM MY JUNIOR YEAR ON MY HAND, AND TEN FROM MY 'JUNIOR' YEAR IN COLLEGE. IT SEEMS THAT IT STILL REMAINS THERAPEUTIC IN NATURE TO ME.
THE TRUTH IS:
I AM A
CUTTER
A
SLASHER
A
SELF-MUTILATOR
I AM NOT A CUTTER BECAUSE I CUT, I AM A CUTTER BECAUSE I HAVE CUT. I DO NOT EMBRACE THIS AS AN ACTIVE QUALITY OR A HOBBY I PRACTICE. I AM UTTERLY ASHAMED THAT THIS IS PART OF MY LIFE. WHAT I HAVE DONE DEFINES, OR AT LEAST CREATED, WHAT I AM. PERHAPS ITS MORE LIKE A LETHAL DRUG THAT GIVES AN ILLUSION OF SOMETHING FOR A MOMENT BUT LEAVES DAMAGES LASTING FOR ALL TIME.
THE PHYSICAL DAMAGE IS OBVIOUS, BUT THEY ARE FAR MORE THAN SKIN DEEP. THE MENTAL AND SPIRITUAL SCARS ARE PAINFULLY OBVIOUS BUT COGNITIVELY NONEXISTENT. THOSE DAMAGES, THE DEATH OF AN INNOCENCE. ONE I WASN'T AWARE I HAD. AN INNOCENCE LOST FOREVER. I'VE HUNTED FOR HOURS, UNEARTHED UNKNOWN SKELETONS, BUT NOTHING HAS ILLUMINATED AN AWARENESS OR UNDERSTANDING OF MY ACTIONS.
I'VE LIED TO MANY PEOPLE. I FEARED TO SEE THE LOOK ON THEIR FACE, THE SAME LOOK I HAD AND HAVE ON MY FACE WHEN I CUT OR WHEN I EXAMIN MY SCARS, THE FACE I WOULD SEE IN THE MIRROR. I THINK A MANY FEW CAN SEE THE LIE IN MY EYES, SEE THE PAIN, SHAME, AND HUMILIATION I RELIVE WHEN INQUIRED. BUT THEY NEVER CALLED MY BLUFF, TO THOSE PEOPLE I AM GRATEFUL.
AS MORBID AND ODD AS THESE FIRST FEW ENTRIES ARE. THESE ARE WHO I AM. A TALE OF MY ENDURING. A HISTORY, A PRESENT, AND A FUTURE. MY CONFESSION OF TRUTH FOR THE LIES OF THE PAST. SURE, THEY'LL FADE. MANY HAVE, BUT THE MEMORIES NEVER WILL.
looking beyond the previous those earlier, defining years of my life; the past year point five has been, humans to ants, the most physical, spiritual, and mental convolution of myself in comparison to other 93.33...% of my existence [im roughly 22.5]. i've spanned the coordinative extremes of the X-Y-Z components, the modular trifecta of the human being.
X - physical (kind of resembles a human being)
Y - spiritual (trinity aspect with ascending arms)
Z - mental (representative of me, i'm sorta mental)
---feel free to establish your own trifecta of human components---
---its actually interesting to graph your state of being in 3D---
i can recall the respective, proverbial mountain tops and dark valley of each anthropomorphic, coordinative combination, and every other possible tri-vectal fusion (6 others specifically). reaching the highs, stooping into the lows, and contorting to the other awkward arrangements. the rapid, unpredictable translocations of my being to thes numerous coordinative locations, has left me numb to each respective attribute of my persono*, bringing me to rest at the loci of (0,0,0).
here i fetally watching the two epitomal** positions of elation (X,Y,Z) and despare (x,y,z) swarming in perfect spherical trajectories distorted by the mutated orbits of the remaining six viable coalitions of points [(X,y,Z), (X,y,z),(X,Y,z), (x,y,Z), (x,Y,Z), (x,Y,z)]. The three vectors X, Y, and Z, usually and naturally are stable, but mine are not. they spin like a die*** where black and white fuse to gray.
---to much time on his hands---
at each of the eight loci, i can see a memory. memories of life consisting of those respective three values. they disappear even before they appear. the memories i can glimpse are marred by the impressions of others. they congeal making a repulsive image of nothing, of ghosts.
its here i wait. waiting for the revolutions of my being to settle. so i can leave my fetal position, be reborn, be human, be me.
you see. its not the bad times that scare me. its my sessility**** in a world of chaos. i would rather be in utter despair (x,y,z) than at (0,0,0) where there is nothing. not that i strive for despair, i dream of elation (X,Y,Z), the optimal trifecta, but that is not where i am at.
-I EXIST AT (0,0,0) -
- THE NOCTURNAL NIGHTMARE OF MY EXISTENCE -
- THAT OF INDIFERENCE -
NOTE TO READER:
there are many other ways which this song demonstrates my existence, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, some of which will be revisited
