A sideways glance at gods on Palm Sunday
.
.
Gods are souls for whom the usual varieties
of life
will never do. They must refuse to choose our
miracle:
they recuse themselves from having any sway
in any way
in our empirical attempts to navigate mortality
because
they’re implicated at the heart of why we had
to take it on.
They are prime movers in a force amounting
to an irresistible
.
persuasion that death must become the pivotal
recourse
for incarnation, because without it there
would be no flesh
or breath. Mortal beings are the sole anointed
ones upon
whom gods bestow the influential rhythms that
we know
of anguish, love, suspense – boredom, sadness,
joy, discovery
and disappointment – lassitude and
irrepressible desire
.
with its lusts and musts: the trust that blesses
us when
spoken, and eviscerates when broken, so at
last we grasp
what more is and what less is. Death is central
to the engine
we call life. But gods make sure we’ll never
be inured to it –
we never will catch onto the subversiveness
of evening
and of dawn, even when we’re told as if
right out, as we are
.
told in fables such as this, that evening,
dawn and gods
and we are phantoms: myths which fog the
truth. Will we
ever know the truth? We are the truth. What
could it mean
to know it? Being it, how could we not? To
know is not
to say it. Gods grease our palms, liberally
sacrificing starring
roles, giving us mortality so we can play
it, remanding their
.
obliquities to fairytales beyond the portals
through which
only mortals can gain entry, to work out ways
to die and to be
born that can be borne. That’s the deal
with Jesus: his self-
erasure frees us: reveals forthwith that he’s
a myth so
we’ll believe we’re real. Gods and their
glories are stories.
Don’t expect to see one. Unless it is your turn
to be one.
.
.
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