God, I humbly
ask for You to open my heart, like it was when I was a child. I know that an open heart is easily wounded,
and I’m not asking for a wounded heart, even though I know that, in this world,
an open heart and a wounded heart are too often one and the same! I guess I just cherish my innocence, and when it comes right down to it, I’d rather have an
open heart that is wounded than a closed, unfeeling heart encased in
steel. A lot of times, I do shut myself
and my heart away to keep from getting wounded further, but it has the affect
of hardening me, and that, I do not like.
I think that the harder and more
unfeeling my heart becomes, the less likely I’ll make it to heaven, and the
less heavenly I’ll be. And I deeply
desire heaven and eternity with God.
There are hints here on earth of what heaven may be like, but also a lot
of hints as to what hell could be like.
I hope to make it to heaven, and am willing to do whatever it takes to
get there. If that means opening myself
up for more hurt, so be it. That may be
the price I have to pay for paradise.
Jesus’ words could be interpreted that way, for he said the meek will
inherit the earth, and the least here will be the greatest there.
I don’t care if I’m of higher rank in heaven
or not; I just want to get in.
- From my journal, November 1999
(The picture was drawn by me using the Microsoft paint program; I couldn't find an image on Google I liked well enough)
What’s so wrong about daydreaming
And what’s so bad about
feeling optimistic?
There’s no use tryin’ to
hide
It’s right there in your
eyes
Well, I can feel it when
my heart beats
We’d be fools not to jump
in with both feet
Because His love’s comin’
over me, yeah
And His love’s comin’ over
you
Well, it’s what we were
made for
All I have prayed for
Comin’ to set us free
Yeah, His love’s comin’
over you and me!
Tears ain’t got no
business here, no, no
And heartache’s gonna lose
its place in line
The feeling’s mutual
There’s no doubt in my
soul
If ever my dreams got shot
down
I know He’d steady my
shaky ground…
I don’t question this
moment
And I won’t hesitate no
more, no!
This time the shadows
Won’t dare to darken my
door (darken my door) Like before, yeah…
(Oh - well, I’ll sing it
with ya!)…
-
“His Love Is Comin’ Over Me”
Clay Crosse
On the day you posted this I remember I was ecstatic over a girl that had become very special to me over the course of the prior year and a half. I was, that day, at the happiest I can remember myself. I remember buying two old CDs from a used music store and listening to them; now, whenever those songs come on, I'm instantly back to that level of happiness but running right on the heels of that feeling, is one of heartbreak and disillusion. Like you, I cherish my innocence and want back that primal outlook on life I once had. I remember, from time to time, how to enjoy that. But it's taking me such a short distance towards attaining the things I've come to want from this life; the things, and the world, that experience, not corruption, has shown me might be possible. I'm not sure if this will make sense, but my innocence hinders more than helps me at these points, as if I know I can in some way return to that outlook but I realize that for me, personally, returning to it is a means of escape from heartbreak and disillusion. For some reason I just haven't found a way to reconcile innocence with experience--and to make sure that the latter is, indeed, experience, and not social and spiritual corruption. How can innocence hinder me from the things I want to attain? Isn't this traditionally what corruption does? If so, is my innocence really that, or some kind of corruption of the sprit like apathy or lethargy? At times it seems I'm unable to tell the difference between innocence, experience, and corruption. Your post was insightful and thought-provoking, but I can't help but notice it's simplicity when compared to, what for me is, a truly complex issue.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteCash,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply. I have a few thoughts, questions, and an old poem to share. First off, I'm curious as to why you experienced heartbreak and disillusion coming on the heels of your happiness over this girl? My wanting innocence has little to do with the so called high life and joyful times, but more so for the bad days. I'm also not talking so much about experience, but corruption, both mine, and other people. I think that you can still have innocence with experience, especially if the experiences are positive. Experience doesn't have to lead to corruption (though often, it does).
Secondly, though what I wrote seems simple on the surface, there's a lot that went into it, and most of it had to do with the moral rot of this nation and a few negative experiences I had because of it. Most jobs come with a certain level of stress and dealing with often mean-spirited customers or co-workers, and a steady stream of such people, can really wear you down. I'm reminded of the passage from the Bible where Jesus tells His disciples, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." - Matthew 10:16. In other words, Jesus flat out tells His disciples that they can be shrewd and innocent AT THE SAME TIME.
The third thing I wanted to say was that only you and God can determine if your "innocence" is actually apathy or lethargy, but it should be easy to tell from a self-reflective level. And I don't get your point about innocence, experience, and corruption being hard to tell apart. Innocence may be difficult to attain with more experience, because experience tends to make a person mature, but that doesn't have to mean that you can't have both experience AND innocence. In fact, that quote from Jesus I used above requires that we have both. As for innocence and corruption, they are antonyms.
I'm glad it made you think, and I often strive in my writing to make complex issues more simple. (In a way, innocence IS simple, and all these other things like experience and corruption are more complex, so perhaps it's my way of trying to achieve innocence in my writing.)
If you're still reading, and are interested, I wrote a poem long ago that kind of goes along with what I was trying to say here. We had suffered a death in the family. I found that people were still often rude, and I sometimes they not only felt like they were indifferent to my pain, sometimes they even seemed to enjoy seeing me or others in pain, or enjoyed causing pain themselves. I've had my fair share of trouble makers in my life from time to time. This poem alludes to my attempts to shut the world out sometimes, and be unfeeling, lest I get hurt again, along with a possibility that all these "Hard Cold People" that hurt me and others, are just like me, and have shut themselves off from the world as well. From their perspective, they are hurting, and they put up a wall to keep others from wounding them emotionally, like I was. But outwardly, this emotional shut down can make them seem "hard" and "cold", and the vicious cycle continues.
The funny thing is, I'm usually not that way! I'm usually an optimist. This was during one of the "bad days". Anyway, here's the poem:
"The People Inside"
The man in my stomach
Has haunted eyes
He hides deep inside
Where he cries and cries
He peers at the world through
Eye socket window panes
Looking outside
Though inside he remains
He hides inside
Away from the nightmares
Away from the world
And hard cold stares
From alien people
Masquerading pods
Androids from Stepford
And other human frauds
Maybe we're all just
Unfeeling lunatics
Maybe we all have
Men in our stomachs
And the man in my stomach
Returns safe and sound
Yet the man did not like
The truth he had found
Even though he may be
A Godly man of prayers
Still, all he's left with
Is hard cold stares
Hey Gary,
DeleteThanks for your reply and for sharing your poem with me. It makes sense that innocence and experience can and should operate in a sort of balance when we approach the world.
To briefly run through why my happiness over this girl ended in frustration and disillusionment, I was originally a Christian and she was not. As our friendship progressed and my feelings for her grew stronger I quickly realized that she had become, at the least, the type of woman I wanted to be with in my life. Yet my strong Christian upbringing necessarily conflicted with that because she was a non-believer, and additionally, because she DID believe things that many believers would condemn. For some reason this was not enough to convince me that I should not be pursuing any kind of serious or romantic relationship with her. It was as if I knew what I SHOULD do but the knowledge was not enough to keep from making the very real, practical, objective decision that what I NOW wanted in life was NOT what I had been led to believe I SHOULD want in life. After a year and a half of feeling that Christianity no longer promised me what I wanted in life, it lost much of its childhood, "innocent" luster for me, and–this may sound a little strange–I made a choice to progressively distance myself from all my former ties to Christianity. This was quite a break for me: I had for some years at that point taught a Sunday morning Bible study at my church, for which my skills in the explication and communication of biblical truth was highly lauded; and I had a deep interest and fascination with theology. At the time in my life that I can remember as my "prime" I was a college student faced daily with so-called institutionalized "attacks" against my beliefs. But the thing is, I thought that I was at a great point of spiritual maturity because these attacks not only did nothing to deter my faith, they actually reaffirmed it. No matter what anyone could say to me, college professor or otherwise, none of it ever conflicted with the word of the Bible, because the Bible not only speaks the truth, but also explains how the world goes about refuting that truth. I felt that I could explain any diatribe against Christ simply by going to passages of the Bible that explained how and why people say such things about him.
[Continued from above]
DeleteFor me, a return to "innocence" IS a return to this type of theological aptitude that I was once very adept at, so much so that many of my closest friends implored me to become a pastor or a theologian. But I know from experience that even this kind of supposed spiritual excellence can instantly shift perspective (at least, in me) by something as precarious, ambiguous, and unexpected as a girl who suddenly just comes into my life. And because my life desires radically shifted after she came in, I'm extremely worried about returning to my "innocent" (spiritually-theologically-socially speaking) because to operate now, as I did then, is to submit myself to an incessant voice in the back of my head yelling at me that "this is the same attitude, the same day to day habits, the same manner of thinking, the same desire for intellectual and theological understanding, that ensured that when she entered your life, you'd be so fundamentally shaken by the study in contrasts between the life you live and the life you suddenly want that you'd become spiral into what was for you unheard of realms of extreme disillusionment."
That's a bit longer than I'd intended but I feel it provides a bit of background. I've been searching and researching and constantly for the past year for a way to reconcile my prior life with the new goals and desires I've acquired since abandoning Christianity, which has been a mix of success and failure, but I don't want to admit that 22 years of my life were essentially wasted being raised, and maturing in, a faith that I perhaps never truly believed in to begin with. This relates to the question of innocence, vs. experience, modified by corruption, in that, when I turned away from the faith, I could no longer trust my morality, my conscience, or indeed, anything that I previously attached the designation of "truth" to.
...and you're still struggling. I think we are both looking at "innocence", "experience", and "corruption" from two different world views. Mine is Christian, and yours, especially now, since this girl came into your life, is "of the world". Your "prior life" was Christian, and I get the feeling from what you wrote that you truly believed it while you were living it. Your "new goals and desires" don't gel with your old Christian life. I think you've got to ask yourself what you believe, and what you think is truth. I would suggest that you don't just listen to the likes of Bill Maher or Sam Harris, taking the "easy" road of thinking Christianity is untrue and simplistic. I've discovered over my entire 49 year existence that many people who are Christian are extremely intelligent, and they use that massive intelligect in their religion, philosophy, and theology. I've discovered that talking to non-Christians, atheists, and especially Darwinian scientists and their proponents - whether I'm the one doing the talking or other people are questioning them - that these non-Christians always take on a belligerent tone, thinking themselves so much smarter than the Christians, and treating the Christians as simpletons... until the Christians start asking them deceptively simple - yet immensely complex - questions about what they believe and why they believe it. And they can't answer these questions. Did you know it actually takes a great deal of faith to believe that there is no God? Then they either shut down and refuse to discuss the matter, or they get argumentative and illogically dismiss the Christians as the dumb, brainwashed ones, but in either case, they cannot answer the questions. They never do. Try it sometime.
ReplyDeleteAll of this is just my way of saying that, sure, you can trust in other things. You can trust in this girl, you can trust in your science professors and your senators and representatives, or you can trust in Oprah and Ellen. You can give up your Christianity and trust in any other people and all the things of this world, and believe the lie they tell that Christians are simplistic, or you can choose to believe in Christ. You are kind of like the masses that followed Jesus around from town to town, and he taught them, but then avoided them, because He knew most of them were just there "for the show".
There are a lot of great, noble, intelligent people in the Christian camp. You have to ask yourself why you never truly believed in Christianity to begin with. Remember: It is much more than just the organized business you perhaps saw it as. In many cases, that can get in the way of seeing the real truth that lies there.
I guess the real question is "Is God in your heart?" He's there, if you choose to look for Him. He was there before, and He's still there right now. I never really lost Christ the way you seem to have done. While your struggle with innocence seems to be, from what I can garner, a fear of returning to Christ, mine is a deep desire to have Christ forever in my heart and soul, and forever with me in this cold, forsaken world - even if it means I get hurt by the slings and arrows of the people inhabiting this corrupt little globe.
Thannks for the post
ReplyDelete