Sermon: "Why Despair Is (Sometimes) Called A Sin"

Because it makes God/gods really fucking frustrated when they're trying to show you they love and care for you through all the worst of things but you just can't seem to take a hint, or two, or three, or a thousand signs of affection.....because it's a slap in the face of agape, philos, and eros to say you lack the guts to take it seriously, or even acknowledge the sight.

Guess I must be a megalomaniac after all, because I think that I am destined to be like a god, admired and feared and worshipped but never actually loved.  Not that I could feel that if it happened, of course--slight defect there...still, I'm not defective in ability to love, and I think I may even overcompensate there in demonstration, just because I don't want to make anyone feel the way I do and have all my life, so disconnected....I don't know, is that grace or merely some vague unnameable guilt that drives me?

I am a raging tiger, a rogue and ravenous wolf.  When pressed or piqued or wounded to the quick, I am ruthless in return, giving as good as I get or much much worse--causing pain is an instinct with me, I know it well enough.  And yet it's not my desire to hurt anyone who merely stumbles....I'm just very - efficient at doing so...the best at what I do, in unpremeditated verbal savagery.

And of course, I need attention, energy, feedback, interaction--assuming one gives a damn for my presence at all.  Otherwise I haven't the energy to "participate" positively, if no one even notices when I'm gone.  I wonder if my friends notice me as much as I notice them...or is this just a stupid musing because everyone can't help noticing me whether they like it or not?  What kind of a force do I show in the world?--what influence, what path, what pressure do I cause?  What change have I made in others, and has it been for the better or not?  I can answer these things theoretically, and yet not believe them...not believe that there is any grace in me, because someone has misunderstood me tragically, and keeps doing so, and won't even take the smallest comforts I would offer freely without fear of being unworthy or obligated beyond their means.  The gods do not want protests of worthlessness when they give gifts--they want their gifts to be accepted, used, made the most of, not ignored...there is no hidden price here, no deep-condemning deal.  Can no one believe that I want the best for them, that I can lay my own desires and needs aside like a winter cloak, can hold myself on ice while trying to make sure that they find what's right for them?  Starvation and honour go ill together, though a fine tale of chivalry they can make, relinquishing love for loyalty..........

I have no irresistible lust in my interpersonal life, no selfish urge that could make me forget and override the bounds of respect between souls.  In order to find my heart and follow it truly, strongly, passionately to possess, to claim, to make my chosen mine without restraint, I should perhaps have to become a beast in truth, that this conscience and circumspection would no longer plague me with its weight.  To quote my current line, honour's a bitch sometimes.

Assuming you think it's honour that drives me after all....