Sincerity, I have learned, is difficult. It is also greatly unappreciated. It matters not if you are a small child, an awkward adolescent, a young theologian, and old professor, or a man on a pension. Sincerity is difficult.
Do you really believe in your garden, or are you deceiving yourself and others? As you work the soil with your hands, water them, clear out weeds, are you committed to the act, honest to your core, or does insincerity fold itself into the dirt, trickle into the roots, feed like a fungus upon the stems?
Truth can be hard to grasp. When someone who idolizes you joins you as you wait, are you waiting for Him, or for her? Do you believe, or do you want to look like you believe?
I used to think that once belief was easy, when we, like little girls, always believed everything we were told, innocent and trusting. Ah, well, as I've been told, "Welcome to the twentieth century!"
I stood firm while my friends mocked me. I sacrificed the rewards of the materialism and appetites of today. All that courage and loss has taught me is that it is not enough. That before the judgement of the Impartial, I am not sincere. I am a duplicitous fraud.
Yet, I keep trying, and this year, as every other year before, I sit in this pumpkin patch, now an old man, and await the One who rises out of the pumpkin patch that He
thinks is the most sincere. Even though I should know better, I
don't see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can
look around and there's not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity
as far as the eye can see.
Oh, Great Pumpkin, where are you?
If you don't get the reference, I'm not advocating worship of gourds. The story is told from the point of view of an aging Linus van Pelt in the context of the television show It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown .
If you'd like a different, darker take on the same subject, check out Escape Pod Episode 25: The Great Old Pumpkin by John Aegard. It's rated PG, for "dark imagery and terrifying fruit."
If you don't get the reference, I'm not advocating worship of gourds. The story is told from the point of view of an aging Linus van Pelt in the context of the television show It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown .
If you'd like a different, darker take on the same subject, check out Escape Pod Episode 25: The Great Old Pumpkin by John Aegard. It's rated PG, for "dark imagery and terrifying fruit."
This work by Timothy H. Ruppel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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