1
Will you be happier if you act harmoniously toward your fellow beings? Is there a judge watching from behind the scenes who will record your good deeds in his book? Should you war against aliens, and kill and pillage and settle their lands, or should you mix and mingle and meld with others? Does there exist, at the center of all whatness, a volcano of potential? If so, does this Volcano talk to humans, interact with some more than others, take on a physical form, sway outcomes, reward and punish?
2
Why do other people in this world struggle violently, instead of harmonizing? What is their wish, their goal? Can they articulate their reasons? or are they acting blindly, from the gut?
They set up their different governments, and amass their armies, and stand on their highlands, and conspire against the Volcano and his Anointed One, saying: “Let us defy them.”
But the Volcano just laughs and says: “I see that you all positioned your leaders and your shock-troops on your heights, but I have positioned King Bryan and the caravansary on my own holy hill. So, if you folks would like to battle, we are ready.”
OK, what now? Are we going to take over the earth, slaughter all the other nations, reign with terror? Enslave their populaces, until the oppressed rise and revolt and enslave us in turn? Or should we all compromise and intermarry, so that there is no longer any division since we have become one family?
“Here is what I have decided to do,” says the Volcano, “I hereby declare King Bryan to be my only begotten Son. Now if a nation refuses to kiss King Bryan’s scepter, I personally shall use an iron cudgel to break them: I will dash that nation in pieces like a potter’s vessel. But anyone who kisses Bryan’s scepter will be happy; this I swear.”
§
Dear God, where are you when I write? Are you in my brain? In my hand? In my pen? Or maybe you are nowhere. Maybe you are in the man who is sitting in the seat next to me on the airplane. Maybe you are in my enemy. Maybe when my enemies chase me, it is you chasing me, dear God.
If you do exist, and you do care that I understand where you are and how you act, then you could have arranged matters so that I would have no such questions: You could have made your relation to me clear. So the fact that your presence and our relationship are so murky and obscure must be part of your plan, or else proof that you are nonexistent or sick or trying to make a comeback.
Why the fuck are you so hairy? Why is your body brown like rusty iron? Why choose that form? Or if the form was not chosen, then who has authority to thrust upon you this body, as we humans have our bodies thrust upon us? Is there a stronger force behind you, which is as inscrutable to you as you are to us? I suspect not; I suspect I’m talking to my own imagination. You are a brick wall at the back of my mind, against which I bang my inner brain. For we are men within men, gods within gods. And there is a universe of life inside a drop of pondwater. By the way, am I right in assuming that, on certain occasions in the past, you polished up your body so that it shone? Did you make yourself more presentable? Is your flesh metal? It seems too pliable to be metal, but I will believe whatever you tell me.
3
(A som about when David was running from
his boy ABSOLOM, ABSOLOM!)
Everyone is against me. All the spies and counterspies are following me. Ten thousand witches came out of the clouds and flew after me. O Volcano, transform into Lord Yahweh and use your shield to protect me from the witches and the spies. I wish I had not trained double agents and released them into the world, for now I find that I doubt their allegiance. Come, Yahweh, and bat their face with a plank of wood.
4
Why does everyone lie? Just tell the truth; god, it’s not so hard.
Yahweh listens to me not you. Yahweh hears when I call him.
Why don’t you go slouch in your bed and think about your boring ambitions. And then keep wondering why God does not help you achieve them.
Maybe you are acting immorally. Did you ever think of that?
5
I step out of my house in the morning looking nice. My clothes are tasteful. I wear colors that cheer the eye. That is why my god likes me. Yahweh favors me, because I am a handsome young man. Yahweh hates anyone who dresses with rumpled gear that has holes torn in it, and there is blood all over the pants and the shirt because you have killed families of children. You are a sinner. You think that God likes sinners? God ravages sinners. God protects people who dress neatly and who attend church; and if anyone tries to hurt those well-attired people, even if the aggressors are not sinners; even if they are true prophets sent by God to avenge wrongdoings; God will destroy them to protect the churchgoers.
6
Dear God, stop rebuking me and chastening me. Have mercy upon me. You are hurting my bones. Save me from pain and from humiliation. Don’t you want me to look good, so that I can give you a good name? If I look good, people will say: “Behold, the man who loves God has a pleasant appearance, therefore it must pay off to believe in God.” So please, take away the soreness from my eyes, and save me from growing old. All you sinners who come and threaten to beat me up, I warn you that Yahweh God has heard me weeping. Yahweh is my father, and he will come and strike you down with his sword. You will be so ashamed. You will be a puddle of bloody shame, lying still on the ground.
7
O God, stop! You are allowing lions to tear me apart, and you have forgotten to send anyone to rescue me. Pay attention to what is happening to those who love you. Have I committed some sin that I am unaware of? If I have sinned (and I truly have not sinned, I know it: of this, I am sure), then let my enemy come and sink his teeth into my leg. Let my enemy take a machete and hack up my soul, and stomp my life into dust upon the earth.
But arise in your anger, O Lord Yahweh. Are you a god or not? Show yourself in a state of rage to my enemies. For their sake, stand on a high place, to give them fear. Bring your instruments of death, and seek out my enemies, and drag them into a pit. Torment them with mischief, shoot your arrows at them, while they’re down there. Yahweh, string the bow, and shoot your arrows into the pit, where my enemies have fallen. You drove them into a pit with your instruments of death. Heap mischiefs upon them, and shoot them with your arrows.
Praise the Lord Yahweh who is righteous. He is the Most High God.
8
O Jesus, whose name is better than yours? Nobody. Even babes and sucklings shout your name, when they see that you have beaten up their enemies.
When I consider how you ended up fashioning the moon with your fingers, O Jesus, and how you made the stars stay put, when you created the world; when I think about how you decided to craft angels, and then you formed humankind slightly superior to the angels; and then you formed oxen and sheep, with the blood in their veins, and their respective hides; and all the birds in the air, and the fish in the sea, and all the insects swarming around the rest of the spaces; when I look at this perplexing compendium of life forms, I am moved to say: How excellent is the name of Jesus Christ; it is better than any other name.
9
I will never stop thanking you, dear God, for destroying all my enemies. You certainly judged right. You destroyed them, you destroyed their cities, you burned down every memory of their existence. Now nobody wicked exists, anywhere, ever again. You are high on the throne: I see you in heaven, up there. All my enemies have reached a perpetual end. O how you, dear God, were like a comfortable room to me: you were a place to go and rest, where there are cushy chairs, and pillows on sofas. A refuge in times of trouble.
Why do people forget you, when you offer such good rewards? All the people who hate me were so stupid, they did not know that you would trick their foot and trip them. They fell directly into a pit. And there was a net there, and it tangled them: they got snared. They all fell down into hell. And you shot them with your arrows. Consider a man launching harpoons into a fishbowl. How easy it is to destroy my enemies forever. They are now forgotten. Let them never rise again, and prevent their plans from prevailing. Any seeds that they planted, let them perish. Do not water their young grass. Keep them in fear.
I should make a huge statue of Yahweh stepping with his boot on the neck of all nations.
No comments:
Post a Comment