the skin of things

I have such trouble explaining the heart of things that I often settle for explaining the skin of things. It proves to be a hazardous and fruitless habit, bringing only frustration and constricted feelings -conveying a mere penumbra of the truth. Yes, I use the word penumbra naturally and I will not hide the fact, damn it. (My lexical prowess has degraded over the years of simplifying for the sake of the less nerdy collegiates (!) who lack my appreciation for precision AND accuracy in the realm of verbal expression. I want it back.)
The propensity to jump around the center of a question, and to trade what I wish to say for something far easier, has only served to make me mull over past conversations continuously. I revise and refine them, hoping that the new polished conversation will somehow be converted into future “real-time” conversation and consequently replace the old conversation.
An example of this insufferable defect in my communication skills (perhaps not skills, so much as tendencies) is found in conversations with my new friend from London. She is the most delightful person I’ve met in a fairly long time, and as such I can spend hours talking to her and remain completely fascinated. She is quite excited to experience College Station, and at one point during lunch she asked very decisively, and in a manner indicating that she intended to listen at length, “So. Tell me everything about College Station!”
My mind was full, and a lengthy discourse was shooting through my head as I intended to explain that “although I love this city and the spirit of its people, it is shocking for its homogeneity and congruent resistance to the influx of diverse people and thoughts which make for a rather narrow-minded population that overwhelmingly claims to be Christian but shows few signs of such allegiance other than a Sunday ritual and an elephant-like stumbling around the precepts of a supposedly grand old party which actually no more accurately represents their aforementioned ‘faith’ than the donkey upon which Jesus rode- but rather has stolen their faith to use as a platform upon which it elevates itself while it wipes its dirty feet… and all of this consequently drives the few who know they aren’t followers of Christ far away from ever wanting to know Him. Oh yeah, and the guy that stands on campus periodically yelling at the sinners passing by while singing a song about how all homos go to hell doesn’t really help their ‘cause’ either…”
*NOTE: no I am not really a total democrat, nor am I a republican hater, and yes, there is a guy who has sung an ‘all homos go to hell’ song and several guys who frequently yell at sinners walking by on campus.*
So as this discourse runs through my head in response to her question, my mouth actually says, “well now, let’s see… there are four main streets that form a square around campus. You have University Drive at the North…”
Useful information? Absolutely. Is it what she was interested in finding out about the cultural climate of this place? Not really. Would I actually ever have expressed the inner discourse? Yes, but in a much softer manner. I really just want to warn her. Coming from a largely secular country, (not to generalize, but hey, I fully realize I am grossly over-generalizing College Station, so it is only fair to do it to both sides.) I feel the need to prepare her. This place can either be an amazing and life-giving resource to people who are open or desiring to hear about God, or it can be an utter turn-off.
Basically, this is just one example of my issue with communication, and I used it because it is a recent example, AND one that allowed me to indirectly stand on a soapbox for a bit.
The most prominent example in my life is when people ask me about Brian. What I want to tell them is how he laughs contagiously like the most endearing little boy, and I want to tell them how his eyes lose their ever-present laughter when he is stirred up with passion, and I want to tell them that he is passionate about the RIGHT things, and I want to convey how he is the most singular and fantastically unique person I’ve ever met…but those things are so hard to explain. I tell them what they are expecting. The dissatisfaction comes, however, with the understanding that the measure of a man just cannot be explained through age, height, eye color, or college degree. It also comes from knowing that what people think matters is skin. We communicate on surface levels not only because it is easy, but also because we rarely notice or prescribe value to much that is deeper.
A fried chicken leg gets some flavor from the skin, but it’s the meat that fills you up and it’s the bone that gives it strength and structure.

I don’t want to only value the heart of things anymore, but I actually want to be open to letting others know what I value.

God is the most difficult to explain, because I truly cannot. There are no skin-deep things of God. Platitudes and clichés, perhaps, but when examined closely they are plenty difficult to fully grasp. As I am vastly dissatisfied with incompleteness, inaccuracy, and diluted power in words, He remains rarely described by me. A thorough vocabulary just won’t do it.