“8 Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. 9 Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. 10 For “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; 11  let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. 12  For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” 13 Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? 14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, 15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, 16 having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. 17 For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.” (1 Peter 3:8-22 ESV)

Plain days meet dreamlands most austere and engaging, intoxicated by Spirit the would-be practitioner of Christian faith, the soldier of the Crown, of the Cross, can talk a mean streak of what-if wonder to whomever is, in the recesses of the human mind’s unverbalized hopes, listening.

The light education of this would-be saint, is a comment insofar as in every way we negotiate. Education takes her or him more thoroughly down the path of self-understanding; the ways we literally boomerang or flip-flop between self-assertion and between submission. See always our battle against the courses rote and familiar of so-called Adherents (“Christians”) whose childlike insistence is at times caprice, criminal, outlandish, appalling: so, too, we eagerly and with malice at times seek another’s downfall.

But see the Christian, determined and believing in some rubric called “for real!”, called “honesty”, called “heartfelt plea as though the Father Himself were on the line”. This childlike receivership, is why Christ calls us children, why He patronizes us with simple messages: “sufficient for the day are the day’s worries”. It is no surreptitious or middling thing to vote Christ: He gives us stark reminder, you are just as caught up in sin as anyone. Our own measures, actions, deeds, they testify both for us—we hope—and against us: hurried is the would-be saint who, losing confidence in her or his salvation, affrights that any and every word or gesture could be turned against him or herself.

Plain days meet the saintly soldier’s realization our own educated awareness of abject brokenness, pride, confessing everything except such-and-such, willfulness, negotiated pleas about just who and what we, after all, actually “are”: we don’t quite know what we “are”. Our light education reforms and matures us, to be bravado and of Christ braggadocio, sanguine, malleable, but nevermind all this “submission talk”: Christ forms dying saints, who maybe erring as far as laughter, maybe erring as far as any number of personal failures, maybe erring as far as unconsoled weeping, do take it upon themselves on dying day to be free of conceit, free of “just let me prove I’m submitted”, because they lance forth Austere, Aggressive, Purposeful. We lance forth because it bores us, in the final issue, to obsess about ourselves. Rather, the dreamlands of plain days, do create a fantasy of just who and whom are conversing to advance human spirit in the land. But in all this, is there a “Wesleyan” notion of Christian perfection? Is there such a thing as “free of sin”? The soldier doesn’t need this doctrine, because he or she has signed their name to the contract called Duty. She or he has signed their name to the contract called Servant. Whether I am sinner or saint, God will judge! But I do not sit here stroking my ego or talking down to everyone I meet because “they” are culpable and at fault.