Honesty

I love American Blues, especially early in the day – preferably just around dawn as the new day breaks.  There is something extraordinarily special about the contrasting hope and honesty present when both events sit with each other.  The music captures the angst we feel and experience in life.  The new dawn, especially a rare English one, filled with the sun, crisp air and translucent skies, delivers a message of unrelenting hope.  When hope and honesty travel together truth wins.
 
 Yet most of the time we struggle with the truth.  Part of the time we find it difficult to capture what we see and experience going on around us.  It is as if our souls cannot find the words, our mind struggle to understand, and our hearts fight on, all driven by confusion.  Even when we know, inside the externals rarely reflect the enlightenment.  We talk in metaphors, stories, and illustrations.  We hide in figures of speech, adjectives, and textures of conversation.  We run by never allowing conversations to finish or even to fully and completely hear what others are saying.  We refuse to listen between the lines.
 
I’m in a moment of wonderful, glorious, honesty, well at least most of the time!  You can sense the ongoing response from others to the words, “Finally!  You're giving it to us straight, in plain talk—no more figures of speech.” (John 16.29)  And yet I find myself not quite transparent, never fully patient, and often intentionally confusing.  I tell myself it is in the spirit of kindness, but I’m not so sure.
 
In the midst of an incredible dawn, full of fresh hope and peace, I find myself longing for truth.  I want, need, and thirst for real truth – truth which does not end, fade, or wither with time.  The key now, then, and always rests with a simple concept – honesty.  It is the catalyst that takes hope into reality, words into action, and you and I into community.  The process starts within but never ends there.  The steps involve our self, but only with Divinity.  Ready?