CAN-YOU-DIG-IT! CAN-YOU-DIG-IT! It was like that scene in the movie, Warriors. Silas, renegade, addressing all the gangs of America in an attempt to create peace, harmony and brotherhood.
They said her name was, Lithe. She looked tiny up there on the fourth plinth, I’d never seen Trafalgar Square so rammed. It was cosmopolitan, a rich mix of tourists from all four corners of the world, for after all we are all tourists. Here for a minute, a baby’s breath in infinity.Where had she come from, she looked otherworldly, ethereal, not from here. Not from the concrete, steel and glass of this city, but from seasoned earth, yellow dust and copper. There was a scent of marigold in the air. She wore thick ropes of hair, that tumbled down her back, ebony at the root transforming to chestnut brown at the tips. She carried well her sure features and large eyes, her raw sienna complexion like the shimmering Vega in the evening sky. The sun hovered, its waning rays resting on and warming our backs as we craned our necks to listen, mesmerised by a cadence that seemed to captivate.
Today, I think I’m going to preach. Sermonise. But not like a preacher. I’m going to begin at my beginning. Take us back. Shake us up. I’m going to debunk the Good Book. Tell people to stop damn well believing in it! I looked around me, see who else was incredulous with excitement. Just this regiment of heads, each with hair of colour and texture, and their and eyes, unblinking.
The Good Book. That’s not what it is for! The Bible testaments, new and old. All stories. Our beloved Bible is a book of stories, that’s all. Stories that a meant to teach, stories that are told to inspire, to entertain. The Good Book does so, well. Parables. Jonah and the Whale was my favourite growing up as child. I’d ask my mother to read it over and over again, every night at bedtime until we both knew the words by heart. I was fascinated with this boy inside the stomach of a whale, swallowed up in one gulp in a tumultuous ocean. Much later, I came to realise that Jonah and the Whale is about contemplation, being in insolation to learn about oneself until such time that the world is ready for you and you the world. It was as if I could see the blood pumping around her limbs, her torso, streaming through her heart with a passion.
The Bible is a tool to creativity, creative thinking. I love the stories of Lazaras, the fish and loaves, Jesus rising up from the dead. I mean who ever heard of or witnessed another waking up from the dead? It has never happened, people. It has not been televised on the television news. “Man rolls stone from tomb. Man digs his way out of a six foot deep grave in London Cemetery and has returned to work as train operative!” I scoffed at that one, flexing stiff muscles in my neck as I continued to listened to her speak.
Yet still, this was insisted on and still is. Jesus, God’s son in physical form rose from the dead. Over and over again, year after year. Why would you do that! Spread false prophecy and untruths. Other than to diminish spirit and control thought. I mean let’s consider this. Let’s consider this together. Now, maybe there was this guy called Jesus. He was magnanimous, a philanthropist, who was loving, humane and spiritual. I’m fine with that, that makes sense to me. We have people walking around like that now, if we’d take a minute to look, to listen. But don’t try to control me with stories of folly. That right there, that’s the stuff of conflict between nations and inane war. Even from where I was standing, I could see the vein at her temple pulse as she became yet more impassioned.
We are created beings. We possess the ingenuity, the intelligence and vision to create anything we can imagine. We are privileged to live on this ever more fascinating planet called earth. Look around you, look around! With open eyes! We are surrounded by planets that we create and have successfully created ways to explore. Telescopes, periscopes, space rockets and away we go, following our fascination. Our minds are technology. The internet. This humongous extension of human thought patterns, creation and understanding. It’s existentialism, the epitome of! Recording individual experience that will remain in existence forever, is creativity. However, it is the same as it was, an idea shared and transformed to a new interpretation on the original. Just like with our Good Book. So you see the danger? Now, it happens so fast. We talk of a viral, a crude but apt way to describe the velocity of infection, the spread of one idea can take. Our memes have become temes. It is interesting to consider these two worlds seeming separate. We have online presence, virtual vision and expression and we have our actual lives. Seeing, feeling, hearing and tasting the world. There is a discourse, there is an innovation of the virtual meeting with real world with a force, but I digress…
I am not saying that my vision, my thoughts and interpretation of existence should be a thing to be ‘believed in.’ That’s our flaw, our imperfection as human beings. One of the many. As soon as we embrace a thing that resonates with us and we experience that sense of clarity, we automatically want to own it. We make it into an entity with rules of what is right or wrong about it. Consider, there never being a right or wrong way, but rather there being an interpretation, of which we are all entitled, of which is our only means of communicating, connecting and understanding ourselves, the world and each other. Meaning doesn’t mean a thing and at the same time meaning is everything. What I’m saying, is have compassion. Put on and walk in another’s shoes, for then you will see her interpretation and only then can you empathise.
Believing, can kill creativity. Stone dead. Belief is how we create. Make sense of our own individual experiences. Because belief is foundation. However, what we do with our beliefs, what we have done with the Bible, we take the high road to struggle. We’re paddling upstream, ‘stead of coasting downstream and in the flow of life. The high road is not in alignment with who we are as relative to earth. I can see that the words right and wrong have become shorthand for aspects of our thoughts and actions that are not in alignment. But, it is important to be clear, to speak clearly so as not to mix message our communications…
I am weary. I speak from within and when time and energy begin their descent, I must save myself as it is my intention to save you. Namaste. Her head bowed, fingers joined at her glistening forehead, her last words carried on a gentle breeze. Namaste. Namaste.
Still I could not take my eyes off of her, her linen clothing, muted green, orange and blues like robes, as she was assisted from the plinth to sit. The million strong audience had not diminished by a single person, we stood firm as a line of men and women dressed in grey, peeked hats covering heads on rigid necks snaked through. “Excuse me, excuse me, they pushed and jostled against the flow. I heard someone say, “security, the security are here…”
Thank you for taking a minute to read my response to the day 11 prompt:
Your Personal Message by Eric Handler
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?
(Author: Eric Handler)
