Sincerity and Love

“We make ourselves real by telling the truth.” Thomas Merton

Duran Duran

Come Undone

Listen Here 

Mine, immaculate dream made breath and skin

I've been waiting for you

Signed, with a home tattoo,

Happy birthday to you was created for you...

Oh, it'll take a little time,

Might take a little crime

To come undone now

We'll try to stay blind

To the hope and fear outside

Hey child, stay wilder than the wind

And blow me into cry

refrain:

Who do you need, who do you love

When you come undone?

Who do you need, who do you love

When you come undone?

Words, playing me deja vu

Like a radio tune I swear I've heard before

Chill, is it something real

Or the magic I'm feeding off your fingers?

Lost, in a snow filled sky,

we'll make it alright

To come undone now

refrain:

(can not forgive from falling apart)

Who do you need, who do you love

When you come undone?

(can not forgive from falling apart)

Who do you need, who do you love?

(can not forgive from falling apart)

Who do you love

When you come undone?

(can not forgive from falling apart) 

We all very much need to know the truth as a function of living in the real world. Cold makes snow; water makes rain, and wind makes tornadoes. These simple truths we know as facts.
But when dealing with the myriad other aspects of a human life, we can very often forget how very badly we need to tell the truth. It is not possible for a person to be in harmony with a truth that he does not yet possess.
So it seems that we must be true inside, with our self, before we can know a truth that is outside us. We make ourselves true when we manifest what we see.

Sincerity is still something to admire, be it in ignorance, humor, understanding or joy. Yet many times, upon meeting with truth, we refuse it, crucifying that which is before our own eyes. Transformed into a grotesque caricature of its former self, sincere truth, now stripped of harmony, wreaks vengeance. It seems the need for truth is inescapable. I deeply need to know wherein to place my confidence, my joy.
The whole package of truth consists in the trite phrase of “talk the talk, walk the walk.” There is a sort of homage to the world which we pay by truth.
Without this, there is left the specter of mental instability or chaos in the form of illness. The classic feature of psychosis is the inability to distinguish reality from fantastic pretense.

Despite this potentiality, men seem often consumed in idle gossip, scurrilous malignment and scandalous calumnies. There is, in their actions contempt, a lack of respect for reality. Some say the base of this issue rests in the will.
We refuse many times to conform with what we know true. We refuse it, fight it; our will plunges into false values, false views. The restless wagging of our tongues is evidence of this state.
Does a spring send out both sweet water to drink, and poison from the exact same source? Can unquiet evil be tamed, filled full, with its own poison?

We are still, despite it all, free in our will to value what we know to be true, or not. And to speak the truth in sincerity is more than frankness. It is a manifestation of a spirit to be simple, to be real, to observe an obligation to the truth about one self.
When we rake the truth, it is our soul we make foul. Heaped with dirt until we recognize it no more. So without a personal commitment to honest self-justice, lying and double dealing become unavoidable. Fear is possibly the greatest obstacle to candor. Others have no authority to demand that I be other than I rightly am.
And when they arrested and beat me, they could not take me down. It was a test of love. When fully myself, my life becomes its own fulfillment and completion.
So in the end, while a surge of pride may devour and destroy, sincerity remains a question of love. In love a person may see the true, and offer love for beauty in its own soul.
'Truth makes us real', as Merton said.

Hitting the Skids

In some places the skids means to be in an unenviable place, as in one step forward, two steps backward. Does it have to be like that? Does that one step back place one on the skids, like a hamster on a wheel? The unenviable turning of the wheel, why?--when just recently there seemed to have come a place of calm, a peaceable and livable state where we might all prosper. Ouch!  People generally don't like what they don't know, what they don't understand or half-understand. Even if there is not direct, immediate conflict between individuals, then there is conflict elsewhere. And where dignity is lacking, respect is absent too.

That brings conflict to you and me. (We're Only Human After All) I've seen this picture before... and suddenly the new made good is punctured by those around who would be the critics. And what the hell am I talking about, you ask? Well, in the short of it, it's about that much used term dignity. Many like that term; they like what it means. The UN likes that term; they use it as part of their human rights doctrine. Do they extend themselves to others?

The Church uses that term too. She really likes that term; matter of fact, she likes it so well, she teaches it every day. Hmm. The dignity of a human person is what primarily distinguishes it from others. All are deserving of their dignity. The sidebar of this blog even has it on there-- affirm the force and value of a person. Each deserves respect...respect them in the place they are... so as to create a more unified and harmonious world. Some of this may require patience. And yes, it works, this more harmonious world. And very well when we all sing the same song. Does that make sense? Can we talk?

Diane Rizzetto writes in her book, Waking Up To What You Do, a story about a Peace Corps worker in the chapter, Taking Only What is  Freely Given:  After pedaling miles and miles with a passenger upon his bicycle in rural Africa on a very hot day, they arrived at her destination. He had gone out of his way to take her. "He was exhausted. I was giddy and in awe of him." It was, she says, an act of dana, giving freely and generously. It is not the simple act of giving help, writes Rizzetto.
Instead practicing dana over time teaches openness; this can be profound in working our way through to a more open heart, a heart that sees past anger, jealousy, fear or rejection.

 The woman on the bike recounts that looking back to that day, moments before the man offered her a ride on his bike, she felt stranded. But still a part of her was calm because she knew where she was in that place, and then the stranger came and offered her his help. She accepted in the spirit of dana. We can learn.
John, the disciple of the Christ writes:

See what love the Father has bestowed on us

that we may be called the children of God.

Yet so we are.

The reason the world does not know us

is that it did not know him.

1John3:1-2