Thus Spake a Nobody

I

I sat with my earthly sire, and I said over dinner, "I am happy for my sin. For it taught me how to be a more compassionate man." Thus, he flung into one of his usual fits. I did not know how I offended him, and he said, "Did I not teach you, my son, how to be a good person?" Yes, my earthly sire, you taught me all I needed to know. By being compassionate, and forgiving me. It taught me to be compassionate, too. It taught me love, don't you understand? How to love despite another's rudeness. For I am rude, don't you know? And I was taught by you, to love unconditionally. That is my religion, after all.

I also learned, as it were, not to war with the world, or try to change it. By one solitary act, my foolishness brought on much sorrow. As I speak, the pains of hell are in my chest. They irritate me. But, I understand, my friend, what sin is, from having bit into the apple. I understand. I cannot be broken, do you know? I know why it is sin. There is no innocence in me, to feel superior to another. There is no claim in me, to being good. There is only the past, and my mistakes, and I can look a man in the eye, and feel no ounce of shame. For, my Savior is good... as it is Paul's words, and Jesus', the remissions of sin.

I do not know how the world goes on without me, but seeing it do so, it is sobering. There is no importance in my body, or my soul. There is only the deep chasm, as a sage once said, that may stare back. Yet, he broke seeing the horse beaten, and became mad. I broke from my own shame, and became humble. If I were in the streets, or in prison, or even here with nothing, I can still attain enlightenment. That there is still good in this world, and I have seen it every day of my life.

I hear Tharasutra saying "God is dead!" If He is, then why do I still hear echoes about Him? Despite all the tries and cares of the world to erase Him from history? He is still there, and always will be. He will transform, and mold, and shape, and the twenty-five baths may spill out their blood... yes there may be a time when we are in dearth as a people, and are like Noah and his family. There may be that time, but all the more, the floods come to purify the Earth.

For no belief is there, than in the goodness of creation, that holds me to God. And the man Jesus Christ, He is good. That is why I believe. Strip from me history, science, law, philosophy, I see the good, and the pleasures of the Kingdom, so I proceed on the golden and narrow road.

This will not be the great work. It will not be a great treatise... I have nothing more to say, than that "I see Good, therefore I see God! Oh, Nietzsche thou art wrong! And robbed the world of its eyes! Plato said 'All philosophy is to seek and attain knowledge of the good!', and in the Republic we see the very tangible means by which he proves it. How did you not see?"

Yet, he saw the animal there, being beaten. It must be, to be good. It learns. Don't you know? It must take the rider, or the horse becomes obsolete. There are no plains to ride on, there are no pastures, but the barns we give them. Slowly, they die, and unless we preserve "Horseness", there may one day be none. Thus, we keep our humanity, through God. Don't you understand? And that, is why you'll never be able to say "God is dead."

II

The harvest is grown by the soil, by the pruning, by the nutrients, by the knowledge of the gardner. However, the blight, the frost, the heat, the water... you cannot control. The plant must have good genes, and be nurtured right, to produce sweet fruit, otherwise it is good for nothing.

Its dead branches must be clipped, its roots must not be rootbound, its soil black or red. It must have all the proper elements to grow. No other plants to strangle it, be it weeds, or the other bred plants, and they must be planted at a distance. You can do marvelous things with the plant, and by selecting its good and healthy fruits, you can germinate them with another, and make sweeter fruit.

Also, you can take a stock of a plant, a healthy and fertile tree, the roostock, and plant a good vine into it, as a scion. You can take a good branch, and plant it into a bad rootstock too. Yet if a wild branch is planted into a good rootstock, it bears better fruit than it could without.

You must pull the weeds. You must shelter it from frost, from snow, from too much moisture... if it grows in the wild, you must tender it for it is your livelihood. If it fails, then so does your fortune.

Know people are like plants, too, and what is religion? God is the sun, the rain, the wind... family are the clippers, the soil, the seedlings. Good fruit mixed with good fruit, produces even healthier fruit. Bad fruit mixed with good fruit, produces weaker fruit. Bad fruit mixed with bad fruit produces weak fruit.

Yet, what the world raises and calls good, is a mandrake. At its perfect point, you can harvest it, and eat it. It tastes gamy, like a poisoned apple and tropical citrus. And you eat it at that time, but all other times it is poisonous. Why nurture your garden for that one time, when the wild fruits grow? And can be plucked?

Likewise, a tree planted on every hecter that bears some kind of sweet fruit, is good economics. Yet, the people say, "It is unlawful to eat, for it belongs to someone." Why? On and on we go, yet what is valuable property isn't respected, the children come and swat the apples off the Farmer's orchard. They harvest the corn in the drums. You can take as much as hands can carry, for it does no harm to the farmer, yet they would, if they could, take sheaves in buckets.

And that is why the world suffers.

©2026 B. K. Neifert
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