A Personal Hell

November 2, 2019 12:21am

On some battlefield, he had ceased to believe in God. There was no dramatic denial, no formal recognition, but one day, belief for him was gone. He thought once or twice to try to find it, but it seemed unimportant now and he dismissed the call as some echo lingering in the neglected caverns of his mind. Then, years later, he came upon a quote of Teresa of Avila, who said:

“Christ has no body but yours. no hands, no feet on Earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good.”

Now, he no longer believed the myths men created to soothe the souls they claimed but he thought that perhaps that made it all the more important to act upon the Saint’s commission – to maintain the illusion, sustain the purposeless masses, and become the hands and feet of the God to whom his prayers had risen from his personal hell. Perhaps he could hold back the tide of nihilism that threatened him and …everyone.

The Best of All Possible Worlds

November 3, 2019

First day of standard time but we rise with the sun anyway and do not heed the clock! This day dawned clear and cold, all the leaves are off the trees thanks to the recent rain and wind. I finished raking them yesterday and dragged their brittle carcasses into the woods. May God have mercy on them and the generations to follow.

Some people have the good fortune to live in times of peace and prosperity. Some of these are born to parents whose industry and intelligence insure the well-being of their children. In some of these families, the parents are wise in addition to their other practical virtues and the children benefit from this most important attribute. So, in this small fraction of the population, we see the confluence of all the desirable circumstances of life. Now, there is always the danger of some accident or other natural malady afflicting these few but, in the end, fate spares the elect and they proceed through life with all the benefits and unencumbered with the travails that besiege the greater number. If they are aware at all of their rare good fortune, how do they interpret their lives? Some believe it to be their birthright, some ascribe it to the beneficence of God and still others may recognize it as the caprice of fate.

Now, at the opposite end of the spectrum are those poor souls whose experience is the opposite of those just described. They have been dealt a bad hand by fate and have the additional misfortune to appear on the scene during periods of war, famine, and/or pestilence. Those with the ability for deep self-reflection have some interesting explanations for their lot in life…cursed by God or the devil? Others less capable just accepted their destiny and endured without question. This is how it is, they think, and there is no other possibility.

He was somewhere in the middle. Born with some advantages and a curious mind at a time when his maturity intersected events that were foreordained by men whose greed and lust for power molded their politics and world view and it was these men who made decisions that put men like him on a path toward the meat grinders and hell holes of history.

He had heard that newly hatched chickens destined for egg-laying factories were placed on a conveyor belt and the females were, of course, saved while the poor males went right into the maw of a literal grinder and ended up as pet food or fertilizer or something. Who knows if this was true? Anyway, he felt like one of those tiny birds riding the bumpy conveyor belt of history to his destruction for the greater profitability of mankind.

Letter to Mom

November 19, 2019

Here is a note I sent to my mother on February 19, 2016:

I was thinking about a church-sponsored trip to a roller-skating rink when I was about 10 or 11. You went as a chaperone, I guess. We were all skating around….seems like it was outdoors. For the first time in my life that I could remember, I perceived you as a separate individual….not my Mom but a distinct personality not connected to me, not obligated to me. I remember thinking how pretty you were and how other people had been thinking that all along while I just saw you as my mom.

I think you’re still pretty and I love you more than you know.

(She would have been about 30 at that time…she was 20 when I was born. As I type this on March 24, 2022, she is 86 and still pretty.)

Investigation

November 21, 2019

If you are compelled to investigate every nuance of human behavior and emotion, you will be weak in the eyes of others and you will never be at peace. Your sensitivity is your downfall.

Chained to the Future

November 26, 2019

He looked upon the fields still green with the late autumn rains. Soft morning sun cast a pale, yellow light upon the undulating land and he wondered about death and the coming eternity under that peaceful sod and the millions already sleeping there. Shafts of sunlight called him back from this revery and he strained to hear the nuclear fires across empty space. That energy had sustained life in the green fields for ages and eons and generations unbroken since creation began. Now, he contemplated breaking that chain that linked the past and the future. He could hear that chain, the soft metallic clang, as the future pulled him forward against his will.