One of our biggest enemies; language. No two people speak the same language. Language is made up of more than speaking words, or signing words if you are deaf. Language incorporates so much more; body stance, tone of voice, and mostly the filters through which we understand and communicate. The last is the hardest for understanding what is being said by someone. When we share something with someone our words aren't necessarily being interpreted by them to mean what we want them to mean.
An example. I love you. Is this a friend, or lover saying these words? If it is a friend are they saying they want to know me as a lover? Do they love me in a non sexual way? Are they trying to get something from me by buttering me up? Now you would think if the words came from a lover, they might mean I hold you as most precious, You are my world, I am committed to you. But depending on your past it might mean nothing more than a friend saying Your my best friend. Sure I love you, but... No one who ever said that to me really did love me so these are just words. Or I am unlovable and you are trying to make me feel good. Wont work, I know I'm not worthy of love.
Everything we experience both spoken and not are understood through the filters of our past. Everyone has them. Some may have less filters than others because they realize how they distort the understanding.
One of my biggest filters come in the form of religion. Everything is clouded by the religious people in my life. I look at an organization that lifts the spirit and empowers the soul and I see all the things I was taught was wrong. Do they believe in this or that. But I was taught... How can anyone call themselves a christian and not believe Jesus is the Son of God? Sounds like a cult to me.
I have found my spiritual connection and yet when I find others of like mind I question their authenticity. How do they come by their understanding... Probably the same way I did. Through trial and error. But this gives you an example of one of my own filters. I see the world through a dark colored lens, distorted by the past. So when I try to share something with someone I am speaking through those filters and they are listening through their own.
And this is how wars are started...
Had a conversation with my sister the other day. It almost blew up in our faces. My religious filters are not as thick as they used to be, I am peeling them back layer by layer. My sister having grown up in the same religious background as my self has very similar filters, though she also has filters built from knowing people I've never met, or places I've never been and experiences we don't share. I shared with her my desire to move to Conyers, Georgia where Bishop Swilley preaches. She started questioning the beliefs of the ministry. When I told her they coincided with my own beliefs, she assumed that I wanted to go there to prop up my own belief system. Have some kind of proof that my thinking was right, which of course to some degree is true. However, she doesn't believe my belief system is valid. Using those religious filters, she sees me, wanting to join some cult. (though she didn't say that, I'm reading her voice to mean that. But of course now I'm looking through a different set of filters that are there to help protect me from harmful words. She may have been thinking something different, though I doubt it.)
Now as to the title of this blog. It comes from, 1 Corinthians 13:12 For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known . This got me thinking. Maybe this means something very profound. Maybe it means that once the filters, all of them, are peeled away we will see each other as well as our selves as we are (naked of anything but our being encompassed by His light.) We will see as we are seen by God. Whole. Perfect. Good.
Bishop Swilley compared the GLBT communities to the story in Acts 11:5-18 Simon Peter had a vision of a sheet that came out of the heavens with every kind of beast on it and told him to eat. But every thing on the sheet was considered unclean by the Jewish law. God said what I have cleansed do not call uncommon. This works for GLBT community as well. Others may call us names, see us and understand us through their filters, but God says we are Good. Genesis 1:31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
When all is said and done, when we come to the next step of our journey we will know, as we are known, with out filters, Good before the Divine.
Well said, Devon....we said....
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