Preparing for the Coming Wave

I sat down to write out another manifesto, but I don't have the heart to claim anything with gusto. There's no gusto behind this. I could manufacture some, but that's not the point is it? The point is honesty and passion. And I am honestly and passionately desperate.

I desperately desire to keep the part of me that has developed over the past six months alive and growing. I want telos. I want to mature, and grow, and learn from my God and from the people and situations that my God puts before me. I want to bow in awe before my King and stand in unity with my brothers and sisters, fellow humble servants. I want to wake up every morning with praises on my lips. I want to go into every night with prayers of thanksgiving in my head.

I do not want to return my old idols. I have an altar to Ishtar the size of my imagination. I have had feasts in honor of Pan that lasted long into the night. I was a disciple of Arachne, and I still have the robes. I have smoked the sacred cigarettes of fellowship with the night, and I have drunk the blessed gins of hedonism. 

All that stuff was fun, and I don't think all of it is evil. Most roads have ditches on both sides after all. But, I most certainly was in the ditch that errs on the side of self-indulgence. I don't wish to offend my friends with whom I smoked, drank, and spun my stories, but I think I understand (if only partially) what Paul meant when he said "all these things I consider loss..."

Somewhere else I wondered how my new self would fair in my old life, for I feel that I have certainly changed, and for the better. This is the crux of the matter: I want to seek after God with all of my being. I do not want to be distracted by seeking for pleasure, or questing after eros, or descending into fantasy. I am not disdaining pleasure, or eros, or fantasy. I am simply tired of seeking them for their own sake. 

I want to seek God. I want to find Him. I want to be made complete, matured, perfected, through Him, and I don't care if it takes my entire life. I don't care if it costs me everything else I claim to love. I don't care what it costs. I have found my pearl of great price and I will not see the sun set before it is mine.

I have so very much to learn, and I want to be taught. My past teachers helped me to construct a world of my own understanding, passions, and desires, relative to what I knew. It was a reflection of its creator, broken and incomplete. I want to learn from God. I want to become more like my creator, even though I am broken and incomplete, and will be until the day I die.

I don't really know what I'm trying to say here. I guess I'm trying to process the fact that I'm about to go back home, and that I've changed. I want you to know that, and to understand that, and to please be gracious with me, because I'm still getting used to it.

I humbly ask that you would be willing to put up with me during my time of initial readjustment. I don't know what my first few months back home will be like, but I know that it will be awkward. My concept of myself has changed, and it will be fragile. I know that some of you will care for me, and press me further up and further in, just as you always have, and for that I am thankful. 

I am worried about this coming wave. I don't know if I'll survive it. It looks like it could be a tsunami, and I fear that my newly constructed levies could break. Either way, the current wave is rolling out to sea, and I stand on the beach, once more praying that I survive the next one.