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 Zarathustra 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.
III
The rabbits tell one another, by their generations, that the man at the house is either safe or dangerous. It lingers by the foot, or it flees. The fox hunts the rabbit, and so does the bear. The deer are majestic to the small, lascivious creature. It eats its kits sometimes, it makes love to its mother, sister, or aunt. Maybe even its grandmother. It knows nothing.
It feasts on the plantain and the clover, it eats the grass and the garden's fruits. It digs holes beneath the ground, it hides in its burrows. The cats hunt it, the hawks, the sparrows and crows are its friends.
It runs, oh how it runs, when being chased. Yet, in its generation, it grows lethargic, and the predators cull the herd. The weak, fat and tame ones die, but the wild rabbits, the faster ones, they run free, and live to be an old age.
Life doesn't have to be like this... my brethren. But, this is the world being created by our fathers, and our peers. I sit and ponder, why the instinct is our meat and bread, but the intellect is our tool for spoiling. Not for understanding. Nature goes in its circles of life and death. Of freedom and slavery. The rabbit becomes a pet, it roams free, it is picked by the scholar and given to his neighbor. The musician sings of this act, somewhere in time. The King of Musicians... the music is pure poetry.
Silently, there is peace somewhere, and there is war somewhere, always on the earth. There is the wars of the conies in their burrows, killing one another somewhere, and there is the wolf pack hunting, and there is the eagle flying high and soaring. And there is the silent squirrels and robins making peace, there is the bluebirds and cardinals. There is the goldfinches and buntings. They go, and they delicately make our world happy. The eagle is a fright to the stranger who does not know his way, and the bear rumages the wood in peace, and bothers no one. Yet, when strife is in the land, they are burdened by the buffalo, and in danger on every side by their neighbor.
Such it is, such it was. And there is one man, who flourishes, and a thousand who die. That is the world.
IV
For fear of the corruption of wealth, a nobody preaches. Not to become great, for like Baruch, there is a blessing in being small. A marginal name throughout history, like Ptahhotep or Papias, that the wisest sages seek and find. For who sought out wisdom? I did. Thus, I am rare. As choice as a Painite, mined in the land of the Bamar Peoples, and maybe as valuable. Yet known only to those who seek it. Sought well, it is a diadem of beauty. Mined from the choicest veins, ruby red yet deeper. And it sits well, affordable if you need it in your lover's stone. Highly sought after by the ones who know of it. Yet, unknown.
For wealth is a corrupting agent, and it destroys the soul. Better to struggle a little upon the earth, than become greedy. For greed eats the mind, and kills it. It seeks the Royal Crown Jewels, and does not treasure the Rainbow Opal. It only seeks power... not the beauty of the gem. It only seeks the price, not the gem itself.
It is a breastplate of greed, and like a false ephod, that treasure of filthy lucre. It is eaten by the moths and mold, and gone. It sits in its forts, and then disappears... where did it go? The nations stored it up for wealth, but it is gone in an instant, and therefore without value. Where was the treasure?
No, lay up in your heart treasure that doesn't perish. Wisdom, like fine gold, refined silver with a small impurity---for that is the most useful. Stamped, and authenticated, and made robust. Not every man will seek the jewel, but the one who finds it will see the lapis lazuli, and know the coat is true. The nations will rage at the bronze figure. But, it is beautiful. It is there. It is set in the home, or on the street, and is worth much fortune. That is wisdom, you know? Most beautiful among the women?
Yet, all look at her, and shame her, and say, "You are not so beautiful." Her purple hair, her ivory cheeks, her jewel nose, her teeth like opals, her thighs like a polished stone, her breasts like casaba, her scent like the forest, her breath like cola, her eyes like the sugar sand coast and sea. She is like a sack of fine flour, and her arms are delicate, like a quartz. And her love is intoxicating... understand. That is wisdom. Finest of the virgins, do you seek her?
V
Yet, consider, a sage once said the philosophers have a defect from birth. It is not to be able to see history. Of course, he went over a large, sweeping mythology of geology, evolution and the like. That is not what I will say... no.. consider wisely.
Each generation of man is different. In the time of Noah, man painted with his brother's blood, and kept his body for sex practices. They embalmed them, and fornicated with the corpse. They kept the prey they killed in their houses, and used the megafauna as their machinery to build, and pulleys and levers. Then, they were destroyed by the flood, and developed rich laws both in the Humanistic Egypt and Mathematic Mesopotamia; Hammurabi, Lipit Ishtar, the Book of the Dead. And there they kept those laws, until the age of the Philistines. Where, the Philistines, the Phoenicians, ate their babies, while boiling them in breast milk. They made love with animals and were sodomites. And God destroyed them with the Hebrew People and the armies of Joshua, with earthquakes, volcanos, swarms of insects, and disease. Causing the Bronze Age Collapse. And then righteousness reigned in the age of David and Solomon, and slowly it decayed, until Israel practiced the same religion as the Canaanites. To which, Babylon overthrew them, and Samus became the lord of the Jews for seventy years, and then Sin was the head of the Pantheon. And thus, Babylon fell to Cyrus willingly. And the Greeks were beautiful in their worship, with philosophy, their gods austere, until they became pedophiles and sodomites and beastiatites. Thus, were soon the Phoenicians and Greeks conquered by Rome, and Israel too, when they became rigid in their law past the point of justice---for like those in China, there was an age of rebellion, and warring philosophies, until there became for one generation rule of the letter of the law, which fell to Confucius. And thus, Israel was scattered, and Rome burgeoned, until it too, adopted sodomism, catamism, beastiality, and even blood sports. Then, Rome grew weak, and was destroyed by austere germans, becoming a Germanic Rome. But it remained small, though dividing several times into several kingdoms. And thus, the Law became cruel, and austere so that through the law, there was lawlessness of the elites. And they were then challenged by the rule of Reason, in the Printing Press, and it disestablished the reign of tyrants. Where Christians won Rome, when the Germans conquered them, they became cruel by holding to their Pagan games, and their pagan practices, making only the rich man's word the rule of law. And thus, this was overthrown by reason, when men were given the gift of Literacy. And literacy grew, along with Christian Fellowship, but the Christians found science, and began to make science their religion. And they exported this to China, not before destroying Lawless Men in the West, who ate their own and sodomized and catamized. And thus, the West became like the Canaanites again, slowly over two centuries. And China too, became like an Iron Beast with Sharp Teeth. In India, the Aryans reigned, migrating from Mesopotamia. And there developed their Caste System. Tribes existed for 10,000 years, unspoiled, some wandering the plains of Africa, searching for meat, others farming their land, others cannibals.
Understand this, about philosophy, each age is different. Men go in cycles with their indulgences. Rome, rape of lower castes was lawful, and in America they sterilized their own. But, there were good things, and good people, too. Everywhere, there is good and evil. The Song Dynasty existed alongside Europe's Greatest Peril. Though Kubla Khan is said to have ruled over the Song, by me, it was the Yuan. Understand history, and you shall understand, man is in perpetual motion, moving and changing, and altering. Never the same, yet the chords of peace are similar in every generation, and the chords of tyrants the same.
VI
Error is a good thing, if lives are not at stake. If there can be no life at risk, risk being wrong. Through error, we learn. We know what is true, and we know what isn't true, a wise man once said we know a thing by what it is not. Maybe, a thing is known for what it is, too? I know not.
Make a mistake, and learn. Make a mistake, twice, and learn. Keep making the mistake, the Fir is the Cedar, the Cedar the Fir, the Cherry the Plum. It matters none to one who doesn't care, but for a scholar, the Oak has its Acorns, the Hickory its Hickory, the Walnut its Walnut, the Maple its Samara, the Pine its Cone, the Ash its Samara, the Birch its Fir, the Spruce its Cone, the Cedar its Sprig, the Dogwood its Berry, the Redbud its Samara. All is known by its fruit.
Yet, commit the truth to memory, after so many errors. So none can tell you, "The raven is a smaller bird than the crow." For if it is or isn't, you never know unless you remember. If the Orca is a Murderer or a Saint, we never know, for through generations reports are made and lost. We cannot know.
We can know what is witnessed. And what is witnessed is handed down to us through man's records. If the records are lost, we know nothing. We cannot even stitch together the pieces. Therefore, commit to memory what you need to commit, before it is lost. If a memory is airy, make it clear. If a truth is false, or a falsehood is truth, remember it, so it is never lost. For in your head, they cannot steal it away. Think and it shall return, the melody of your song.
This is the way of the world. And I am a nobody, telling you it... listen to me, but understand: I have seen enough of man and his error, a thousand times. I know nothing, save that Christ raised, and died, and Him crucified. And that Love endures all things.
For how do I know anything about Caesar or Alexander? What is written? If it is mismanaged by the scholars, we know nothing. How do I know about Christ? By memory, my dear, the whole Gospel and Bible is known. Through its seasons, and airs, and concepts. To imprint upon my heart, to be righteous, as a saint once showed.
For Rome is bitter and is harsh. It destroys and is Antichrist. There is nothing we can do. It erases it destroys it devours. On it goes, until one day, we know nothing of the past. What do men do? Do they recreate? They cannot. Therefore, remember what you can, that which is important. For you do not know the mystery, until you do... that man is a liar and a fraud, thus seek the Kingdom and the Book of Life. And there you can know all things. This word is ended.
VII
The Daffodil is the beginning, the Aster Flower the end. The holly and rose make hips in winter. One is poison, the other less so. There is a beginning, there is an end, there is a way that is poison, there is a way which can be plucked, if ever so skillfully.
Such is life and labor and morality. Christ is the Beginning; Christ also is the End. The Daffodil the most beautiful Christian, strong, hearty, even wild. The Aster Flower ornate, and like a purple daisy, among the last of the wildflowers, though the cultured flowers still will bloom. The leaves turn yellow and orange. The goldenrod bloom.
Recall this, the acorns fall, the hickories, the walnuts, the currants are ripe, in the first weeks of summer the mulberries are good. In July and August the Peaches and the Corn are Sweetest. Timely fruits are always there, to ripen in their season. Watch carefully, and tend your fields.
Mind not the business of another man's field, for there is his business, and here is yours. You may kill his crop, by telling him to do it your way. He doesn't understand it, and his way was borne by family generations. Thus, skills are lost, and there is winter. Nobody can work, and there are no fruits. The gourds are on the stoop in November and October, and look delicate, like ornaments. Yet, the snow comes in January and February, and there is nothing but cold. For there are no skills, there is no wisdom. There is only darkness.
Christians, I say to you repent, for I told you all you need to know about the world, and its ways in this treatise. There is nothing more to add, and nothing more to subtract. Mind your own vine, and eat your own fruits, and not another's. Do not set foot in your neighbor's house, or he may tell you how much money he has wasted on you, and you will not be friends anymore. And you shall mourn. Labor for what is yours, and tend your business. Do not give up. Work, and after 17 years, the smith's blade may still fail sometimes, but there is knowledge of the forge. And the blade becomes a hoe, which rakes the soil, and makes it fertile. Therefore, plough in winter, and gather during harvest, and nourish and water and watch during summer, and sow during spring.
The constellations go, and so does the moon, that is your calender; the flowers tell your days and weeks. The sun guides the day, and the moon the years... all work in tandem and in perfect harmony. Therefore, do not be severe... what a man finds, and strives, he does. Therefore, do not shame him, even if he does not get paid. For who knows? The LORD may shine a light on him, and his harvest will be plentiful?
For you shall reap what you sow on this earth. Watch your soil carefully, and tend your City, for the Kingdom is within you. Govern it skillfully, and do not mind the high things of the world, what can you change? For if the inhabitants are unruly, and are tyrants, then so are you. But if they are at peace, then so be you, too. For your peace shall be like rivers, if you abide by the LORD's command, and your civilization strong and cultured. It shall not be burdensome on others, and you shall prosper in your day. Mind you, your own business.
Be a good parent, and give your children the things they need and do not take from them, for they may be a shame to you later in life if you do. Do not curse them, parents. What they find to do, let them do it, and do not try to govern them, for your own soul is yours, and theirs is theirs. If you continually uproot what they have planted, they shall have arid soil, and the dust shall blow, and who's at fault? Therefore, bless your children in their work, and you shall be happy.
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