The fruit that bites back
Part 4 of Messages from the Edgeby E. J. Ward
Its true we have been clever
Weve found a way to amuse our fingers
And abuse our minds
A trip into the unknown known
Where everything exists
And people we never heard of
Tell us things we have no need to know
About a world we never knew existed
It frees us and enslaves us
This truth that lies deep down inside
That everything exists for us to find
Lies we believe because weve looked for them
They warned us about this
This fruit of the Tree of Knowledge
That bites back
Leaving us hungry always wanting more
We knew a thing or two back then
We wrote the book
Our Stone-Age minds programmed to lift the stone
And find underneath another stone
Just waiting to be lifted
A perilous descent into the void
The game was on
Nothing could stop us now
We had the taste for it
This thirst for more than data
For the knowing not the knowledge
For the seeking not the finding
For always looking further than there is
Drunk with the thirst for thirst
For the unknown thing just round the corner
Underneath the stone
Out of control
On a roll
Thrilled by the prospect of collision
That might release the one thing we are seeking
That stops us in our tracks
A definitive confrontation with ourselves
But this is only a blip isnt it
For THIRTY-TWO-THOUSAND YEARS AGO
Our genius ancestors
Were throwing us a link to the sublime
The world they knew
Our world
Filled with transcendent grace
Unimaginable beauty
Magical animals
That rambled through their lives
And gave them meaningThese people are US
And we are them
What happened to us
That we so lost the thread
Betrayed our race
Distorted our humanityHow to recapture Our birthright Our family
The creatures of our world
Who shared our pain
Astonished us with their abundant lifeAnd blessed us by their presence?
How did we so fall from Grace
And shrivel into what we have become?
If I believe what you tell meI give you power
If only for a moment
If I do not believe it
I empower myself
And take your power away
If only momentarily
If I believe you sometimes
I retain the power of judgement
And diminish your authority
But not always
If I believe nothing you tell me
I am calling you a liar
And increase my self-esteem
By judging you
If I always believe everything you tell me
You are my parent or my teacher
And I am very young
Or very stupid
If I am not very young
And still believe everything you tell me always
I have lost the capacity for rational thought
And need to give you power
By making myself stupid
If I am not very young or very stupid
And still believe everything you tell me
However improbable
UnlikelyOr impossible it seems
I have relinquished what intelligence remained to me
And have made you into a GOD
Because I need to worship someone
Or something
Irrational
That cannot be explained
Or believed
This makes me happy.
OK Ive made you into a God
So now what happens?
You have to find me a name I suppose . . .
Cant I just call you Fred?
Its not very Godlike . . .
But it is your name . . .
Yes . . .
So now I can worship you?I dont know. There may be other considerations . . .Like . . . ? Im not sure Im qualified to be a God . . .
But if I worship you isnt that enough?It depends what you want . . .
Just the usual stuff remission of sins and so forth . . .
Have you got any sins to remit?
Of course. We all have sins dont we?Such as . . . ?
Let me think. Hostility. Aggression. Impure thoughts. That sort of thing.But have you actually DONE anything? Committed a crime for example?
Of course I have! Im sure I have. I just cant think of one at the moment.
Well let me know if you do and well see what can be done.
And in the meantime I can keep worshipping you?
I suppose so.
THANKYOU! You see? You just needed to believe in yourself . . . Its not the suffering that warps us
Its the addiction The fiddling with the scar
The exploration of the wound with grubby fingers
Embedded in the hole we keep on diggingDeeper and deeper
Seeking the truth about ourselves
Groaning and sleepless into the pain we go Following the WHY
Lured on by the spectre of an answer
To dig the bullet out that caused the wound
But supposing there is no bullet
Suppose at the bottom of the hole
We find a note I AM HERE BECAUSE YOU WANT ME
How do we handle that
How do we fill the gap left by our anguishThe Holy Hole
The Sanctum Sanctorum that we venerateEmpty and aching to be filledWe fill it with the suffering of others
For now we have the skills
Forensic tools to explore known territory
To further the investigation
The game is on again
Were good at this Our hole is filled once more And we are almost happy
Weve found a meaning to our livesBut are we not free to leave?The door is open Why cant we get out?
What is it we love about the painThat we must shut the door against a radiance That cauterizes like a flame of light
Healing and cleansing
Giving and forgiving As only Nature canWhats the ferocious charm of guiltThat we so cling to it?THE ASTONISHING FLUKE WE SEE EVERY
DAY AND TAKE FOR GRANTED
The Sun happens to be 400 times largerthan the Moon
And happens to be 400 times furtheraway from the Earth
So that the Sun and the Moon appear thesame size to usCoincidence is Gods way of remaining anonymous EinsteinThe day I beat my man at chess
I never played again
My heart which should have leapt with joy
Was taut with sudden pain
I sensed a marked strategic loss
Rather than a gain
I didnt mean to do it
And it cast me into limbo
For he was a chess champion
And I was just a bimbo
So to keep my husband happy
And contented as before
I had to lose some battles
For him to win the war
But that was many years ago
And things have changed since then
I no longer have a husband
Or a need to pamper men
I feel no need to demonstrate
That I have got a brain
For the strategy of losing
Has proved a major gain
I discovered intuition
Has a potent inner core
And the boundaries of consciousness
Were greater than before
My world was now much larger
Than the world you find in books
For a formal education
Is more formal than it looks
So glowing with contentment
I played some games for fun
When much to my astonishment
I found that I had won
A unforeseen sensation
Invaded me inside
An increase in self confidence
And smug contented pride
Good Lord I thought Ive cracked it
Ive found the way to win
With just a bit of practise
Theyll never know Im dim
But then I felt the same response
As I had felt before
A shrinking of capacity
Where I had looked for more
For this new world was pitiless
Was narrow and unfeeling
No crazy sense of empathy
No shared delight in healing
The boundaries of consciousness
Had shrunk again to this
If I get it right I win it
If I get it wrong I miss
I still play silly games of course
As often as I choose
But with this subtle difference
I dont care if I lose
Our lives have hidden strategies
Not always of our choosing
And it seems I had discovered
The Strategic Art of Losing.
Silence at Noon
Nails us down senseless
Uncomprehending
Silence at Noon
A sacrament in another language
Beyond our grasp
Dense with meaning
With implications for our dwindled state
We can no longer hear
Silence at Noon
We know not who we are
Or why
Understanding has left us
The tide gone out
And we are stranded
Unfinished
Incomplete
Swamped by Eternity
Silence at Noon
Unpeopled streets and empty skies
A shred of light fidgets an oak-leaf
But nothing moves
Silence at Noon
Older than knowing or unknowing
This held breath
Tells us that we are nothing
That we are sacred
The answer to no known question
Silence at Noon
For seven hundred years the Angelus bell
Flooded the fields and woods
Lifting the labourers face to heaven
Emptying skies and putting the birds to bed
And now we live in a secular age
This elemental energy holds us still
For no-one has told the birds that God is dead.
copyright E J Ward 2015
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