Saturday, September 30

Cellophane-Wrapped Tongues


I want to be more honest. Not just on this blog, but in real-time, too. I like to think I'm awfully honest. But, lately I feel like I've put bars in front of my words. Maybe it's because I'm living in such transition. Or maybe because I'm an approval-suck. It's both/and, I'm sure.

A few years ago, I started scribbling about the lack of bare naked honesty I've experienced in Christian-circles. Like most of the songs I write, I never finished it. It is an indictment of my own laziness as well as the sub-culture of sugar-coated words that we tend to welcome in the Church. I'd like to break the bars of both.

In a dream last night, my tongue was wrapped (delicately) in cellophane. Very strange, it was. I was in a room of thousands, but they all thought me fine. Through numerous conversations, no one seem to notice that there were layers upon layers of thin clear plastic jacketing my tongue. Under their quick glancing inspections, it seemed red and fleshy. It was visible, at least.

"Oh now, your tongue looks just like our's, dear."

I too quickly believed them. In the eternity-seconds of dreams, I instantly learned how to talk through layers of thinned plastic.

They patted me on the back. Someone quickly handed me a sugary-drink as we held our glasses high, and (all too awkwardly) toasted, "God bless us, every one."

2 comments:

One of Freedom said...

My friend Nancy likes to talk about the love-hate relationship that many Christians have with honesty. Honesty can be hard, especially in the culture of expectations that is most of our North American churches. We don't know how to deal with honesty so we develop these shallow personas. The problem I see is that these personas might fool ourselves, but they hardly ever fool other people.

Anonymous said...

I like what you're saying honesty is hard but worth it. It's better out than in, I feel that in church and christian life people are frightened to really open up becaue we fear judgement. We've been taught about holiness for so long we don't want to appear un-holy. I prefer transparency to holiness. One leads to the other.