A Letter, In Which a Vial of Dirt is Enclosed

Dear friend,

       The difference between a vision and a daydream is the audacity to act. I have lived my life as a dreamer until this point, and now I think God is calling me to anchor myself in His daily provision in a world of dirt and blood and cake and water. I am discovering several truths in light of this calling.

As a race, humans tend to float along in the pursuit of some heroic and inspired future, rather than opening our eyes to the present reality and creating action in that reality. We forget that the future is the same substance of life that we are currently experiencing, coming towards us at the rate of 60 minutes per hour, and consequently we spend much of our present daydreaming about a future where life is just that much better, abandoning the opportunities available in “the Now” to atrophy. To supplement these ideas, my mind has been sipping on three words like brainwave tea—practicality, reality, specificity—earthy words that can, by the power of God, transform our daily lives by removing our heads from the clouds and plopping our hands in soil that is wet and alive. The decision to implement these words and their consequences into our lives, in the hope of living with vision and action instead of daydreams and passivity, involves certain steps.

       Firstly, we must invite the Perspective Room into our homes. The Perspective Room is a place that I have created inside my head, a lounge of sorts, with couches and green walls. It is a place completely separated from my immediate physical surroundings, a place not tethered to the desires of my flesh, or to the injustice and noise of the world. I retreat to this room because, in this room, I am the self that God created me to be—swayed not by hunger or disease or exhaustion or temptations or self-doubt or hatred or other worldly influences—but only driven by His guidance and love that provide perspective on all matters. In this room, there are no shadows. Problems that seem so important in the world are bathed in light in the Perspective Room, and therefore can be confronted with wisdom and logic. With the perspective obtained in this room, we are able to see the injustices and pain in this life, separate them from our own identity, and act accordingly.

       Secondly, we must admit this existence of injustice and pain in the world to ourselves and to each other.  We are given a choice: to become angry, overwhelmed, and despairing about these broken things, or to identify, confront, and pursue resolution of them. It is of no good purpose to be smothered in anxiety and outrage over these injustices. It is, however, of good purpose to direct the passion that results from knowing “things are not as they should be” toward discovering creative and specific solutions to injustices for the purpose of restoration. Otherwise, we allow the emotions to crush our spirits, and the injustice wins by default.

       Thirdly, once we become aware of pains and injustices in the world and admit their existence, it is necessary for us to be humbly honest about our personal specific struggles. We were not created as people who isolate ourselves by hiding problems in the dark to grow and fester in our imaginations. Instead, we were created to be practical people who call things out as they are. Specifically, we must release our pride and admit the problems that we personally battle, remembering that the problems are not of us, but rather another substance that has already been conquered by Christ. We must admit to ourselves and each other that we all deal with problems, and that we do not want the problems, especially because the problems often cause us to act or be in such a way that we do not want. Once we accept that we have problems and do not want them, we can together seek resolutions to these problems in pursuit of the abundant, better life God has made available to us. For example, we must confront the touch-me-not subjects of masturbation and pornography and homosexuality and anorexia and suicide and depression and addiction and so many others when raising children, equipping future generations with knowledge instead of fuzzy and vague references to unspoken, but frequently faced, struggles.

Essentially, the time has come for us to live as creatures of the light instead of cave dwellers in the dark who are superstitious, afraid of their own lives, afraid of failure, afraid of injustice. To choose fear is to choose darkness, death, and lies, for fear creates monsters of things which are, in reality, only pale and sickly embryos that burn and die in sunlight. Instead of fear, then, we choose light. Instead of daydreams, we choose vision. Instead of clouds, we choose earth—firm, green, and pulsing with life.

       Affectionately Yours,

              Alex