Guest Blogger: Love Notes from the Fickle Monster, Part 20

Well, hey pals...I have missed you. Summer was sweet to me, and Autumn has been generous; let me share a little love note with you today.

I saw the final moments of this commercial between haphazard flipping.

The phrase, PROTECT WHAT'S PRECIOUS, resonated in my gut - you know that immediate and powerful feeling, the feeling that motivates to action in turn provokes to thought. I was so moved by the phrase that I made it my Facebook status (funny how contemporary American society [or just Cora R. Flottman] identifies significance). Protect what is precious became the cadence for my thoughts for a few days until I drummed up some other epiphanic thought.

protect what is precious

protect what is precious

protect what is precious

Today, I am missing my theatre students from 2009. As Autumn wandered into Winter that year, we wandered into each others lives, changing, growing, laughing. I was young and terrified. They let me cry and get angry and mess up. They were, and still are, precious, not because they did anything, they are intrinsically precious. If I were teaching them this lesson, I would begin through definitions.

So, a word study for you:

Protect: [v] to keep from damage, attack, theft, or injury

  Verb: the part of speech that expresses existence, action, or occurrence in most language

  Keep: to retain possession, to save; reserve

  Damage: impairment of the usefulness or value of person or property; harm

  Attack: to set upon with violent force

  Theft: the act of stealing

   Injury: injustice

Precious: of high cost or worth; valuable; dear; beloved

Save that which is costly, worthy, dear, and beloved from harm, violent force, thievery, and injustice.

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And so, my question for myself today is: what really is precious to me and am I truly protecting it?

Because I like doodling and I had ample time to do such things today, this is what I came up with.

Make one of your own; permission granted.

My family, my friends and soul mates, my future are connected through me

whose value is offered through the anchor of the Holy Trinity.

I would like to be dishonest and say this diagram depicts the constant continuum of my personal thoughts, but the truth is far from it. Sometimes, often even, I protect things which aren't so precious - the inanimate, the fleeting, the counterfeit. I place a label of "precious" on worthless junk because it seemed right, or someone told me it was important, or Deceit dressed it up, made it feel good, and told me to hang on tight. I regularly guard this rubbish because I have convinced myself that I must do, create, or strive to have in my possession what is precious in order to be precious myself. This perversion, distortion of protection pollutes the human experience turning us greedy and competitive and corrupt. Our battles are fought with one another and the true and sacred and holy is forgotten, trampled, and abandoned. We forget one another. 

What is precious? You, me, the human being - the souls of humanity - the carriers of this sacred substance endowed to us through the love of our Creator, the sacrifice of our Savior, and the preservation of the Spirit.

Beloved, protect your very self.
Lie will follow you around, break bread with you, and sleep beside you. He is heartless.
He will tell you to compare yourself. He will whisper you are unloved.

He will tear you apart, slowly and carefully. He will suffocate you with work.

Lie will offer you allusion of the valuable; do not sacrifice even a moment of your existence for him.
So, shut the door. Burn the notes. Break the mirrors. Protect what is precious.

Your value was intrinsically designed in creation;

so, I beg you, protect what is precious.

Oh, my loves, allow God to cover you,

be at the very center of his protection and hold tight to your precious selves.

The Lord is our shepherd; we lack nothing.

Speak and believe it today, tomorrow, and the next: I am precious.

I dare you.

I dare me.

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Cora Ruth Flottman is the best friend, college room8, and complete inspiration to Sheila.

She is an actress, teacher, student, Christian, lover of the written word,

and men who can change tires on a car.

She blogs here on a great day, Friday, when she fancies it of course.