Dustin's Sermon on the Stage

To take the words right out of Dustin’s mouth, “…love is a loyalty sworn, not a burning for a moment.” My love (and therefore my “loyalty”) to Mr. Kensrue was questioned yesterday evening, so I felt it necessary to throw together a quick post on his brilliance. In order to do so I will go back into the archives, and pull out a Thrice classic; in fact, I consider it pretty much Thrice’s (and therefore Dustin’s) anthem. Musically the song is powerful, but what of the lyrics? Let’s take a quick look inside…

When deadbolts awake you from déjà vu dreams,
At four in the morning you know where I’ll be.
Out running red lights asleep at the wheel,
The sirens feed my nightmares.

I just close my eyes, and I’m already there;
It’s already too late.
I know it’s nothing but lies,
But they sound so sincere;
I find them too hard to hate.

And she calls from the doorway “Stolen Water is so sweet,
So let’s drink in the darkness if you know what I mean.”

And I’m almost sure that I’ve been here before,
That this is not the first time I’ve stood in front of this door;
With an overwhelming feeling that I shouldn’t go in,
But it seems this is a battle that I never could win.

And you! My true Love!
You call from the hilltop. You call from the streets,
“Darling don’t you know, the water is poison?”
And I say! “Come on and give me my poison.”

What have I done?
Is it too late to save me from this place?
From the depths of the grave?
We all are those, who thought we were brave.
What have I done?

It is clear that Dustin is telling a tale using the proverb found in Proverbs Chapter 9. “Stolen waters are sweet,” with references to his true love calling from the hilltops, etc. contribute to my hypothesis. Proverbs Nine talks of a lady named Wisdom building her house on a hill, and how she preaches of what true wisdom, knowledge and learning is. (Dustin loves learning, seeking, pondering for truth almost above all else; or in other words “his true love”.) Meanwhile, another lady sits by her house telling those passing by how wonderful her stolen water and food are; however, her guests are truly in the depths of hell. So what exactly is Dustin trying to tell us? What is he trying to say?

Deadbolt is all of our journeys in life. For the most part we have our sights set on the good and true things; however, there always seems to be those same pesky vices that bring us down, right? We know that they’re wrong and that they will cause us harm, but we give in anyway. Our guilt is almost immediate, and we ask ourselves, “What have I done?” “Is it too late to save me from this place?” However, the true genius of the song lies in this message: we may think we are brave, but we are not. “I just close my eyes, and I’m already there; but it’s already too late.” How easy is it for us to fall into those same vices when we constantly expose ourselves to them? His message is that once confronted by them it’s already too late, we are done for, and even as wisdom calls out from the hilltops and streets that it’s poison, our reply will remain, “Come on and give me my poison.”

So what does this have to do with this blog, and our message of being a lion? My simple reply is everything. The call (if you choose to heed it) is to be more than a sheep merely wondering about, and taken by the whims and whirls of everyday life. A sheep hears the glorious message that “water and food are sweet” and ignorantly walks in to its utter demise; however, a lion not only stands at the familiar door and denies the offered temptation, but further still avoids it altogether! My charge, as is Dustin’s, is to stand up and be a Lion; to not allow the lies to become sincere, and “too hard to hate.” To seek out the truth, and allow nothing else to compromise the strength that comes from it!

To bring this post to a close, I’ll leave you with a quote that I love…

The mind must not only possess a knowledge of truth, but the soul must revere it, cherish it, and love it as a priceless gem.

May we all seek the truth and hold it dear as a priceless gem, and may we have the strength and courage to stand up for it, “at all times, in all places and in all things,” to be in fact Lions.