“When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that GOD IS DEAD!"
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It was one of those beautiful mornings. It was a morning of bright sun and deep blue sky, of a light breeze blown just enough to set off the unbalance of the hot sun on the skin. Of course, it had to be a perfect day, it was Easter. The day of their great Savior’s resurrection was marked on the calendar today. But that was 2000 years ago, they think. How do you celebrate this event? How can you fathom the divine turned flesh? How can you fathom her dying the last death to live? How can you fathom this eternity?
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“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” Deuteronomy 5:6
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The boy learned these 10 at the young age of 5. They were memorized in order, even with a catchy song. The boy who learned this at the age of 5 was now 8. He held tight to his father’s large hand as they were welcomed into the sanctuary. It smelled of Bibles, he thought. The Bible always had this smell. It smelled of ancient, of dirt and of holiness. It was of dust, it was the smell of old. His nose caught these things at first but was quickly led in another direction. The smell of cheap perfume mixed with aftershave meant the service was about to start. Today the boy went to the front with the rest of his friends to hear the story of Easter. The sanctuary was different today. It was packed pew to pew.
The man left with his son for a nice lunch with the family. The five-year-old sat at the kid’s table with the cousins he only saw at Easter, and usually only at this table. He was eagerly anticipating the Easter egg hunt. How appropriate it was to search for a golden egg with a nice prize, maybe even money on this wonderful day. It was the greatest day, afterall.
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“I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children,
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's gonna fall.” –Bob Dylan
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The parents eagerly finished hiding the last eggs in the backyard and made their way up to the house. This was the act that marked Easter. This is how they knew. They yelled go. The boy was the first into the field of waist high grass with his baby blue Easter basket to find the golden egg. The boy was beyond most of the adults and deep into the field, probably about 500 feet from the house and in a deep thicket of brush when he tripped over a hidden log and fell into the briar patch. Broken plastic eggs were everywhere. Fake green plastic grass covered the briar patch as the boy whimpered pulling himself out. His nice Easter outfit was ripped to bits as he struggled for freedom and with each kick and pull new thorns pricked his young flesh. Eventually, he pulled the last branch out of the cloth on his right arm. He had wrestled out of the thorns for a few minutes and scratched himself extensively. Some wounds were deep. He stood up and checked for the damage. He was bleeding profusely on the palm of his right hand, and when he went to touch it with his left, he noticed the same wound on that hand. He tried to dab it up with his navy shorts, but it kept bleeding. The shorts were starting to get spoiled as the boy noticed a faint smell of copper. It was starting to get worse as he sweated under the sun, struggling with his wounds when he noticed the blood dripping onto the white cloth of his mangled shirt. He was bleeding from his forehead too. The features around him started to fade a bit, and the boy forgot about the egg hunt. He was dizzy, and sat down next to the log that sent him into the briar patch.
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“I should only believe in a God that would know how to dance.
And when I saw my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound,
solemn: he was the spirit of gravity--through him all things fall.”
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The sun was no longer out above his head, but rather somewhere else. Darkness started to fall along with a cool breeze that was neither comfortable nor despicable- but rather, there. The faint sound of the other children’s voices started to disappear and a fog enshrouded the bleeding boy. The boy was about to cry when suddenly the briar patch beside him caught a light blue fire that felt the same on the face as did the breeze. It seemed as if the breeze was a word from the fire sent to the boy and only him. It was a beautiful sight to be sure, but not only that, but in every other sense nothing was found wanting. His sense of smell was even most profoundly impacted and thus it affected the boy’s taste. It was a taste of a berry he was sure, but one he had never eaten. It was the richest and coldest taste on his tongue, a taste that salivated his mouth and sent it flowing from the sides, past his teeth and over his lips, dribbling to his chin. And the sound- the sound was as if a million notes corresponded from a harp and each one of the notes could be perfectly dissected. It was as if each note was a click from clock, taken from the past or the future and made to stop time itself. It felt as if each note danced on the eardrum and delighted him as if scratching a place he could never scratch that had been bothering him for years. At this the young boy started to laugh uncontrollably, and began to limp closer to the flame. The young boy was taken by this wonderful being, swept up in the awesome majesty of the strangely tinted brush fire. And the boy’s blood flowed more and more, creating a sort of moat around the brush fire. As the boy felt to his knees in the self-made moat, his face only inches from the strange flame, he noticed the thorns individually. The darkness had now completely enshrouded the boy, glowing with a hint of blue from the being. The pigment of the boy’s skin even started to change to this blue color, a royal type of color, like red in all of its manifestations-except perfectly blue. As the boy’s head was drawn closer and closer to the flame, the thorns all jumped from the brush as if startled like a nesting grasshopper, and floated above the being in a perfect color of white, changing shapes to familiar and unfamiliar things alike. The boy watched them dance for what seemed like hours, changing into many things, from his family members to his favorite dog, the glistening white thorns told his story in a matter of seconds. Every memory, some he had not known and some he had intimately known were shown to him, and the boy felt as if he had relived everything all over again.
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"If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should not be able to do so. But the wind, which we see not, troubleth and bendeth it as it listeth. We are sorest bent and troubled by invisible hands."
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After the boy sat in wonder for what seemed like hours, he began to notice the amount of blood he was losing and immediately stood up and screamed at the blaze, “What are you?!” The boy was shocked at his own words, wondering even how he was able to speak. The Being answered immediately, “I will be that which I am.” As the being spoke, a thunderous tone struck deep within the boy and he was immediately wrapped in the white thorns.
