I always associated glory with victory. The shining knight, trampling his dying foes with the hooves of his white stallion. All of the pretty cliches. And, of course, I have no stallion, no sword, not even a single 'foe' whom I want to trample.
Maybe just... subdue a little.
And then I remembered who I always based my true understanding of 'glory' off of. Glory. To a Christian, what can surpass the glory of God? There is the sword and the shield, and the stallion, plunging us into eternal truth and the only true way to doing something right. Only nobody needs to be trampled, just changed. Victory is not the act of destroying the enemy, heartlessly, and then shining radiantly in a pool of blood. That's false victory, false glory. The glory of painters and poets who have never conquered the simplest understanding:
He whom we associate with victory never achieved it in our understanding. He whom we identify with glory was glorious without trampling, but rather by changing. He was humble rather than shining, dying in the mud of the people, under the sun of the people, washed by the tears of the people. He humbled himself enough to go without a victory. The victory was after death, in changing Hell, in marching in as the glorious Knight and defeating evil. But destroying nothing. Because by destroying, we achieve nothing other than a mock-glorious painting of our imagined victories.
And, come to think of it, to change is significantly more difficult than to destroy.
And therein lies the glory.
