Hope thirsting sheep

OK, I can't explain everything here. But some of this has got to come out.

Hi, everyone who maybe started reading my blog now. You don't scare me. None of you. What does that tell you about me?

I wish I could draw a plain picture of the conflict in my chest, in my head, in myself right now. Work, life, direction, discernment, all the weight, all the wandering. I wish I had someone who could speak to me, and show me the conquest, show me the reaches. But the path I walk means that I can't know that. I want to encourage you, if you struggle with wanting to know, well, sometimes we don't get to. It's OK, it just means that you get to grow without knowing what toward.

I need to get some things straightened out, and I need to make some clarity happen soon. I need to have some peace about somethings, and I need to draw closer through study. I need to let go of myself.

My current favorite band is Oh, Sleeper. I know most of you wouldn't like them. Actually, I think that The Antiphonal Dissonance, who first led me to them, is perhaps the only guy who would really like them who reads this. Anyway, Oh, Sleeper. Part of the reason that I like them is the music (yes, it is music. Nara, go away.) but the larger reason is what they say. I can identify. And I can identify about wanting to scream my lungs out about it. You may not realize that about me, but it's true.

Following the footsteps of heroes never led to the safe and grey roads.

Some of their songs make me want to just lift my hands in the air and let the waves wash over me, I want to internalize what they're saying, and make it me, my own. One of the themes they hit on a lot is how frail we are, how unable we are to do this on our own. The way they express themselves, in the hopefulness of surrender, the recognition of the difficulty and the darkness of our walk, I get so encouraged with the triumph in their outlook.

Why spare the life of inglorious waste? Why let him live? He's just hunting your own! How can you just sit there and watch? "Because I love you more than you know. Look again and tell me what you see!" In the window was me.

I'm listening to them while writing this post, and deciding that you can't really understand what I'm talking about until you listen to The Color Theft or Building the Nations. Or Revelations in the Calm, which makes me... not happy, but content. Content with where I am, content with what I am doing, content with my path.

Oh, forgiver! Where is the justice in letting me live?

Lots of days that I am here, I begin to wonder at myself. I struggle with getting everything done. I struggle to make good on what I say. I struggle to stay upright, I struggle to stay warm. But then something takes me out of this ignorance. Introspection will take me down a dark path, but will fall short. There's something else that I must grasp hold of, another perspective that I must have.

So when hell is at the gates, who will stand and meet the waves and take the fight to their graves to end the dark campaign.

There's... a lot going on here. And I have been led to see something of late, as I get to know people here better, as I get to know myself better, as I get farther on this path. It's something that part of an Oh Sleeper song grabbed at me with, and I'm holding on to it through the struggle, and as I press on.

DESTROY! REBUILD! Plant the seeds to reclaim victory! Through struggle, we press on. We are the army of the far from perfect, this is the call, the call to tear down, tear down, rebuild this world.