Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Sermon #4


Does it upset you that there are microorganisms that have better lives than you?

It’s an interesting existence, life in this world or dimension or whatever we’re calling it this era. We rely on the decomposed corpses of the long dead dinosaurs. We grow plants to kill and eat them. We herd animals into tight spaces and give them miserable lives so that we may slaughter them and devour their flesh.

I’m not suggesting you eat dirt (which is just dead material) or rocks (which is sometimes dead material). Rather, I’m asking you: How do you feel knowing you’re part of a constant cycle of subsisting off the dead until we ourselves one day die? What’s worse, we aren’t providing much.

Plastic, I guess. If the world needed plastic, we did our job. I’ll have to ask that the next chance I get: what is the point of plastic? They say “A diamond lasts forever,” and that’s a nice marketing slogan for a company that violently exploits the ultra-poor and young, foolish couples. Clearly the former are getting the harsher end of the stick than the latter, and it’s the latter’s continued ignorance that enables the whole process to continue.

Imagine a world where nobody died. It would be awful. Your grandparents and their grandparents, and their great-great-great-great-grandparents. They all still believe in slavery and misogyny, and of course they see age as the defining factor when it comes to authority.

This is the world of the gods. They cannot escape their tradition, because their past never leaves. The old never die, and the young never get ahead.

Those with eyes are best to read this.

One of the ways of killing a god was finally discovered. I cannot share it with you (nor any of the others), but I assure you… it is barbaric. It was so simple, it was shocking that no one had thought to try it before.

War broke out. Long-standing feuds that had remained dormant for millennia in stalemate erupted with a renewed fervency with the knowledge that one could attain satisfaction. Rather than continue to live in peace, the gods chose instead to wield this new weapon against those they disliked, those who had wronged them, those who had wronged their family, and those who had just not shown them enough “respect.”

In the end, the gods had all killed themselves, save for one: a young infant named Yaway. A large cow named Kamadhenu waltzed into a barn, where the baby had been hidden by its mother. The cow heard the baby god wailing, plodded over, and offered its utters.

The baby grew up, alone in a world very different from this one. While the gods had all killed themselves, there was quite a bit of life in the Old Place. Yaway learned quickly from the natural surroundings, and (as gods are wont to do) He grew just as rapidly as you could imagine. Each morning He woke up another year older, and what’s more, another year wiser. Within three weeks, He was 21 and He was sure He knew everything.

This is when He found out the point of all of this: He hadn’t truly understood what was going on. The cow, the grass, the trees, the fish in the water, the birds in the air… it was all alive. He wasn’t alone, after all.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting to think about. Following and supporting; please return the favor!

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