Fair ye be sure, but cruel and unkind...

Fair ye be sure, but cruel and unkind

Fair ye be sure, but cruel and unkind,
As is a tiger, that with greediness
Hunts after blood; when he by chance doth find
A feeble beast, doth felly him oppress
Fair be ye sure, but proud and pitiless
As is a storm, that all things doth prostrate;
Finding a tree alone all comfortless
Beats on it strongly, it to ruinate.
Fair be ye sure, but hard and obstinate,
As is a rock amidst the raging floods:
Gainst which, a ship, of succor desolate,
Doth suffer wrech both of herself and goods.
That ship, that tree, and that same beast, am I.
Whom ye do wrech, do ruin, and destroy

--Edmund Spenser


What a dark poem.  This man is all of these things; the ship who ruins herself and the goods, the tiger hunting the blood, and the tree alone and without comfort.....why? Because of hate.  Hate is so contagious because it can mask itself with every bit of necessary beings possible.  It can fit any mold of anything a person feels they need.  That is why it is so contagious and so dangerous. 
Everyone hates. At one point or another everyone hate somethings, someone, anything at some point in their life.  It is inevitable. 
Think you dont hate?  Do you hate....cancer, death, sickness, childhood pornography, rape, murder, war, terrrorism, gay, lesbian, religious, atheist, annoying, slutty, shameless, mean, dirty, immature, too mature, drugs, alcohol........I can guarantee you shook your head to one of these things.  We always find something in this world to hate.  Are all of those things above bad to hate?  No, not necessarily.  I mean, I hate childhood pornography, and i hate drugs.  I wouldn't say its bad to hate those things, not at all.  However, what IS bad, is that this hatred i have for these things begin to clothe themselves in the everyday things I love.  I love my family, but my uncle who is so far gone into the world of cocaine I dont think we shall ever get him back.....and sometimes it makes me hate him.   But, do i REALLY hate him.....?    
No.  Yet, when in the middle of our hatred that we can justify, it takes on a mask and begins to cloud our judgement as it latches onto the things we hold dear, such as family, friends, siblings, aunts, uncles, etc.  And we then begin to see them both so closely together that we hate one thing so we must hate both. 

"I hate drugs, and he does drugs, so I hate him, he had a choice."

But did he? Do you really know him well enough to say he had a choice?  Do you know this for sure?

"I hate gay people, its against my religion.  A boy in my church is gay, and I hate him for his sins, he had a choice."

Did he?  Can we really say that we are 100% sure that they have a choice? 

"I hate sluts, and that girl over there is pregnant, I hate her and her sluttiness, she had a choice"

Did she?  How do you know for sure she wasnt taken advantage of by a family member and this is the terrible end result, to which she must remain silent to if she wishes to live and keep her baby alive?  Do you know this is the case for sure that she was simply being 'slutty'???

What if it were you?  WHat if you were raped and found yourself to be pregnant with a child that you never wished to exist?  Would you enjoy the comments made by those in your church of your unspoken belly growing.  Could you handle the whispers of how you are supposedly addicted to coke because you're bored, and not becuase when you came out of your mothers womb you were already addicted because of her wrongdoings, not yours?  Could you handle being tortured, screamed at, and abandoned because you simply could not follow the sexual norms despite how hard you try to make a better 'choice' for yourself. 

Would you believe that any of these people would CHOOSE this fate? 

If so, then you are being masked with hatred clinging to those in your life you are to love; everyone.  If Jesus walked besides you when you wittnessed these people, would you still say these things? Would you still make these accusations and offenses? 

I highly doubt it. 

I constantly find myself in a state of confusion between what aspect i need to hate, and what is appropriate.  I go by the rule 'hate the sin, not the sinner' despite how absolutely wretched and hard this is to do. 
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!

It means you must walk alongside all of these people while you swallow the pill of hatred and feel it burn inside you until it fizzles out and your vision is cleared.  Completely and totally uncomfortable, but absolutely necessary if you want to live, and by live i mean bask in God's love. 

I recently wittnessed a brilliant woman open up about her sexuality.  This woman could make any man i have met to this day look like a dim stone on the ground of intellect.  Yet, she was hated, and she knew it to her very being.  You see, to most, her being is an oxymoron; Gay and Christian.  Those two things are NOT supposed to be put together in the same sentance without a NOT in between them, separating them completely.  How sad.   How sad that such a brilliant woman whose cup is absolutely overflowing with God's love is corked by the hatred of her "Brothers and sisters in Christ".  Yet, where there is OBVIOUSLY the love of Christ pouring out of this woman, they only see the hate that they have allowed to be attached to her being.  How sad.....but even more sad to those who will not take the time to get to know her and have the impact I had.  How sad for them indeed.

How sad for me, everytime i mistakenly hate a person for their druguse after a long history of drugs in my family.  How sad for me that i jepordize the chance to meet someone that God himself intended for me to help.  Yet, I just let my calling pass me by time and time again.  Dont we all......

How sad that we set aside God's plan for us when it means we have to get a little dirty, and let the 'filth' of those we  HATE so much get all over us.  Yet, it is only in that filth that we can truly understand them, and thus miss out on the happiness of doing God's works. 

We are the tiger, hunting those around us when we smell their blood and taste our hate.  We track them down, and we put them in their place......separating ourselves from everything and everyone around us while we become a dead, lifeless and lonely tree in the middle of a dead field because we strangled the life out of all that we were surrounded with.  We begin to hate more, and before we know it, that hate attaches to ourselves and we become the ship, taking ourselves under both ruining the ship and all the goods.  We are nothing all because we let the hate we justify attach itself to the things in this life that we are supposed to hold dear; everyone. 

How would you feel if God himself showed you the day you stomped all over the Gay kid at school, denying him access to love when that child was supposed to grow up and lead you to happiness.  Would there be some remorse there since all the sudden you realized he was going to make you happy, and that it was in Gods plan for him to be in your life, despite what YOU had in mind.  Perhaps then we would realize the shame we have upon us each and every time we do this.

I make small steps.  Whenever I hear that hate in the back of my mind climb over the person i see in my head i try to think "What if this person was here because of God's doings?"  And that hate runs away to hide, and i see the person for who they truly are. 

I used to be hated because I didn't love God.  What a terrible person I was indeed, the Anti-Christ I was, according to my fellow classmates.  I never said I didn't love God, i Said i didnt understand HOW to love God......yet, their hate for all those who didn't walk besides them climbed over me, and denial set in.  Thus, I was literally denied the love of Christ himself.  I was a feminist who loved Gay people because they were people too, so there was no room for me in God's kingdom, so I was informed. 
Then comes a man who looked past it; his hate didn't climb all over me and the smile I met remains there now.  "I dont know Christ" i said, and he replied "It doesn't mean he doesnt know you" he responded, and thus I was granted access to this God everyone spoke of, who owns my heart today. 

You know what would have happened if he had let his hate get in the way of seeing me?   There would be no wedding to come on June 24th, 2011 because the hate would have kept us apart.

Maybe the impact of hate wont be as great in your life as it was for mine, but maybe the impact of YOUR hate could impact someone ELSES life to this extreme......so think outisde of yourself, because if you don't, you will become the ship that destroys itself and all the goods, and that hate that you once had allowed those you hated to prosper over you as you self destruct. 

Love, and love all......Christ is in your heart, and if he TRULY is in control, you will love everyone and everything, even if it takes every ounce of your energy. 

<3

Poetry.

Hope     

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
--Emily Dickinson




I adore this poem.  I enjoy the idea that when you read a poem, you must be aware that you potentially reading a million different poems, depending on how each person interprets it.  I could read this poem 20 times a day and Im sure I would have something else stick out to me each and every time.  Isn't that beautiful?  That's why I love poetry so much; it never gets old, because it can't! It simply can't.

Why do I love this poem....well.....Tonight I love this poem because of how I read it in this moment.  She uses the word thing for hope because it is endless in meaning.  If you were to give it an actual name, it would have an end of description.  If you call it a "thing", it is endless for description sake.  Is there really an end to describing a "thing"?  We don't even know how to start.....well...I don't at least, but I think that is the point of calling it that.  It sings in our hearts without actually saying words or making a sound since we never really hear the hope we have deep in our hearts.  Its just....there, and we can feel it, and since we are the ones that feel it, only a storm can ruin it, one of anger, frustration, self doubt....whatever you may be feeling at that moment.  We silence it. It is so fragile because it is without words and so it is easily silenced by our self doubt.  The good thing about a thing with feathers, though, is it can always fly on its own, whether or not we even pay attention to it, so while we are thinking we have lost all hope, we really haven't....its still there, waiting for us to create another branch to perch on, but it never leaves us entirely.  We use it when its there, curse it when we feel like its gone, have seen it in our darkest times of life and while we have never smiled so much in a day while looking into the eyes of the person we love the most in this world.....yet, it never asks anything more of us than to just let it be with us.  It is us who choose to not feel it if we need it the most.  We cannot end it, but we definitely create it since that is when we see it, we can always feel its warmth.......if only we didn't allow ourselves to get too cold to notice it. 

See what I mean?  You may think "WHAT is she talking about this poem means something totally different."  That is fantastic, I enjoy the thought that someone has a different interpretation of this poem that I can read and think "Yes, I see that!"  Its interesting. 

People are like poetry.  I love to people watch, creeper-ish as it may sound, its not.  I love looking at a person and thinking "Who are they"?  I look at their clothes and come up with one opinion of them.  Then I watch their face as they are sitting alone and can tell their mood.  I watch as a woman walks up to greet this person and his face lights up from the glum mood he was before.  He loves her, that is evident.  She leaves again and he is contemplative, and the way he holds his body as he sits shows me he is mentally exhausted since his back sits higher than the rest of his body as if he is holding is much-too-heavy and filled mind up with all frustration in the gut of his midsection as he thinks.  As he gets up and takes one last sip of his coffee before leaving I know he has a good outlook on life as he takes a minute to remind himself to breathe.  That is the psychologist in me.  I love it. 

Had a person been sitting next to me, they probably would have come up with a totally different explanation and description of him.  This is why we need not care how we show ourselves to the world because different people may see right through to our core while others only look as far as our clothing or our eyes, which are typically gaurded to the highest degree.  Yet at the same time we want to show others what we are,so we put on a front.  We put on a fake smile, we put on all this extra veiling to mask what we truly are.  If you want to know how you truly are as a person, take a photo when you least expect it.  Look at your eyes, and the true story of your being will be there, I guarantee this. 

This is the last part of a person that I look at because it gives me all the answers I need, and sometimes Im not ready for that.  Your story is in your eyes, so when you walk down the street avoiding the stares of people, all this hard work you are doing to create this persona is completely worthless because you're hiding your true self. 

I have been informed on multiple occassions that I make people uncomfortable when I stare into their eyes.  I am not ashamed to show what is in my eyes, im sure there is a lot of anger, pain, grudge, and other negative items.  But, I hope that people also see love, kindness, a readiness to hurt for people and with people, and the eyes of God if they need to see it. 

Take any random photo of yourself and cover up the mouth, the nose and the cheeks and stare at the eyes.  What do you see?  Is it who you try to be or do you see someone different, someone much separate from what you think others view.

We are living poetry and have every opportunity to be perceived as whatever we would like, but our eyes are the text version of that poetry that remain constant and bring us back to the main portion of our being. 

I can only hope I'm showing who I want to show within my eyes when I stare at people. 

I wonder if people can see all the things I try to hide, which makes me wonder why I do this to people so much, but I don't care.  I want to be what they need to see at that moment, much like what I need my poetry to be at the very moments I struggle. 

What a ramble, but it was fun. 

Love as if it had no restraints-
        Hana