“A human being has so many skins inside
covering the depths of the heart.
We know so many things
but we don’t know ourselves!
Why, thirty or forty skins or hides
as thick and hard as an ox’s or bear’s
cover the soul.
Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.”
-Meister Eckhart
For as long as recorded history, man has made a habit of hiding. Ever since the first human beings, something has felt wrong inside of us- like the millions of pieces of who we are don’t quite fit together. We can try to force them to fit, sawing off edges, sewing on new parts. We can craft them to make our pieces look like everyone else’s, but it won’t help. We are the Broken- one of the few things we all have in common. Over the years I have come to realize that some people run from the thought of being messy, desperately filling the cracks with career, cars and the clapping hands of men. And, in some oddly beautiful way, others embrace the brokenness. They stare deep into their dark corners, truly seeing their depravity with their own eyes. I don’t claim to know which method is “better.” I simply want to share my experience with searching the shadows. “Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.”
There is something wildly beautiful about someone sharing their story, the shiny and rough bits alike. I find very little more satisfying than getting to perch at the window of someone’s soul- hearing about the moments that make their skin glow, the memories that cause them to crack, bringing tears and quivering lower lips. The songs that inspire, books that challenge, relationships that ache. Each and every experience matters. We are molded and shaped by the premature death of a close friend, the late night conversations, and the careless words of a crooked generation. Those are the pieces we desperately try to remake. We sometimes refuse to accept the junk, haphazardly throwing it in the backyard for the neighbors to complain about. But that junk has made us into someone unique. Let me be clear on something: the junk doesn’t define us. Not in the least bit. But it has done it’s fair share of making us who we currently are.
covering the depths of the heart.
We know so many things
but we don’t know ourselves!
Why, thirty or forty skins or hides
as thick and hard as an ox’s or bear’s
cover the soul.
Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.”
-Meister Eckhart
For as long as recorded history, man has made a habit of hiding. Ever since the first human beings, something has felt wrong inside of us- like the millions of pieces of who we are don’t quite fit together. We can try to force them to fit, sawing off edges, sewing on new parts. We can craft them to make our pieces look like everyone else’s, but it won’t help. We are the Broken- one of the few things we all have in common. Over the years I have come to realize that some people run from the thought of being messy, desperately filling the cracks with career, cars and the clapping hands of men. And, in some oddly beautiful way, others embrace the brokenness. They stare deep into their dark corners, truly seeing their depravity with their own eyes. I don’t claim to know which method is “better.” I simply want to share my experience with searching the shadows. “Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.”
There is something wildly beautiful about someone sharing their story, the shiny and rough bits alike. I find very little more satisfying than getting to perch at the window of someone’s soul- hearing about the moments that make their skin glow, the memories that cause them to crack, bringing tears and quivering lower lips. The songs that inspire, books that challenge, relationships that ache. Each and every experience matters. We are molded and shaped by the premature death of a close friend, the late night conversations, and the careless words of a crooked generation. Those are the pieces we desperately try to remake. We sometimes refuse to accept the junk, haphazardly throwing it in the backyard for the neighbors to complain about. But that junk has made us into someone unique. Let me be clear on something: the junk doesn’t define us. Not in the least bit. But it has done it’s fair share of making us who we currently are.
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