Oh, right, about that Perfect thing?

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Yeah, Pink isn't exactly my cup of tea.  And yet, when rummaging through the music closet in a thematic manner, I ran across it.  I actually didn't mean to play it.  I meant to click it off when I saw who the singer was.  Fate crossed the wires between the "close" and the "play" tab though, and... something drew me in.  When I actually heard it... I knew.  And, yeah, I learned a lesson... again.  But that isn't the whole of the story.  The meaning?  The reason?  The reasoning?

As I have written here, I am a fighter type.  Not a standard one, a street thug type, nor even a soldier, really.  I am experienced, and at one time was rather cocky about it.  Whatever you may believe, I was good.  Too old now, perhaps.  It would still take a lot of jackals to down me in hand to hand, but only one young warrior, and he wouldn't have to be the best.  Old.  My life has been based on that.  Socially, even those I have claimed and been claimed by as family, were from that set.  And, from what I went through to get it, I have been exclusive, snobbish, even dismissive of those who don't fit that, save for the women I have known, and to a degree.

Some people call standard folk sheep, or rabbits might be the newer term.  I will never be one.  I wasn't really a wolf or a sheepdog either.  Not my style, still isn't.  I just am, do what I think I should, and help those who help themselves or truly can't help themselves, if I can.  And while I dislike wolves, I dislike those who allow themselves to be fodder for the wolves.  Wolves are a problem, but if they have nothing to feed upon they... fix themselves.  And I do blame sheep, in part.  They have allowed, even encouraged, much of the problem.  I wasn't allowed to live as a sheep, and wasn't interested in being a wolf, and am mostly glad of it.  Some jealous exists, mind you.  I'm not completely blind to the bliss of sheepdom, when the sheepdogs are doing their work rightly anyway.

The thing is, the second time I died, I saw something.  I saw the gates of heaven.  I also realized God, if from some unknowable distance.  And yet it was not like here, where you can't sense Him like the sun.  You can feel God, I would say.  But there is no element of physical reality to go with the spiritual notion.  I got to sense that.  Sure, oxygen deprivation, the bodies own pain killers, lots of things could have triggered the sensations.  But... I don't think so.  I think I was well and truly dead and got a little glimpse.

But what I felt there...  The power of that love God has for us, all of us, sinners too (as if there was anything else?), was astounding.  I got to all but be with God, there.  Much of what I had thought about others, myself, gone.  Took me a while to make sense of it all.  I had to decide if it was even real, and more if I wanted to believe.  Well, and how to believe and what to do with it.  Perfect.  It is how God sees us.  The problem isn't God, it is us.  That song, it just... covered it so well.  You are perfect.  So many just don't know, understand.

Anyway, that is why I went so far out of my normal musical comfort zone for you.  So you... might get just a small smidgen of a taste of what is available.  I could suggest you have concern about hell.  I won't discourage it.  That is real too.  I will, however, suggest that if you concern yourself with the carrot, the stick won't be an issue.  Heaven is worth everything you might spend on earth to get, even your life.  Your life isn't what it seems.  It is a moment.  Think of it as that dressing over a wound.  You don't want to remove it because it will hurt, but holding onto the old, pussy, infected bandaging will kill you.  I don't know if that is the best way to put it, and I mean only when your choice is to live evil or die right, but...  The price is small compared to the gain.  And you are perfect, just not yet, find your way to it.  You are truly, all on your own, an apple in God's eyes.  And from my experience, and to within my limits, you are an apple in my eye.  Even when you do me wrong.  But uhm... don't tempt the Lord your God... or me.  Old but still a bit cranky, and forgiveness doesn't relegate punishment to the dust bin.  Just... sayin'.