Of Storytellers, Gods, and Kings God save the king. --Samuel 10:24 It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men. --C.S. Lewis Power is founded upon opinion. --Napoleon Bonaparte All kings is mostly rapscallions. --Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage. --Thucydides Chavez is dead. The old Pope abdicates to the new. We sense collectively the vacuum of power atomized Humanity so readily succumbs to the spell of tyranny Often functioning more like ants than free men. Through unevenly ingrained millennia-old habits We have come to see in our leaders salvation or doom We, the object of their necessity, stand effectively humbled Ever ready to obediently serve and do what we are told. We imagine someone grander than our mere selves Remember, not long ago the powerful demanded worship Forever deserving of our obedience, loyalty, and faith Simply because of some convenient voodoo mythology. Good men bowed under the Inca in huge, high cities As freer men relentlessly patrolled the Incan perimeter Citizen-slaves obeyed their “god” without questioning Though the path of progress lay in another direction. I guess we dont operate the same way any longer But, still, the chains of command and obey run deep Chavez didnt expect the press to question The old Pope demanded adherence to his dictates. Weve advanced a little over the long centuries Leaders are no longer, normally, objects of worship Yet, in reality, weve thrown in our lot with the Incas The Law must be obeyed, we must not be free. Of course, some freedoms we dont need and cant have If you had total freedom, I would have none So both of us agree to meet the other half way But that’s not the extent of it, something lies submerged. We are told, even now, what we must do to live together And, if that works, a leader might gain our respect But, unless you happen to live in North Korea You probably dont have to declare love and fealty. And let us not forget the Master of command and obey--God! Kings, Popes, Presidents all wrapped themselves in His cloth Shedding light from above on all those deemed loyal To this day, they bask in the power citizens conjure. Few remember this all started with simple campfire stories The tribe or clan gathered around the warm, glittering light Surrounded by the darkness and all that was unknown Howling in the distance could easily be the supernatural. Fear, mortality, the terrible aloneness had to be defeated Or surely men would perish in a cruel land ruled by death The job of the storyteller was not exclusively telling truths To entertain, to teach, one hero is worth a thousand cowards. So stories became larger than life, reflecting the struggle To overcome the frailty that could lead to the darkest ending The pair were shamed in the Garden of Eden, but carried on Odysseus never watched the sun rise with fear in his heart. Somewhere long before names are known, some storyteller Perhaps attempting to explain “Why?”, created something new Whether springing from some inner truth he alone perceived Or the result of wild imagining and the basic desire for more. Campfire stories started to be about more than mere humans Gods ignited people’s imaginations as if with fire itself And nothing has ever been the same. We are not alone. That simple idea brought power to some over others. In the beginning, it seems that God was a playful entity He might create the world on the back of a very large turtle The founders of a mighty city might spring from rock or river Mother Earth, the Pachamama, was honored, not feared. God provided a successful hunt, life, the world we know But that was merely His job as compatriot in arms I think the Afterlife came later, and how to get there Became the tool that could be used to change this life. Storytellers eventually became chiefs, and chiefs, kings The kings loved the stories of God with a simple twist How convenient to keep the people under control Praying for salvation in some unseen world to come. God became the bane of those who did not obey Angry and vindictive, demanding love and worship A mean King who could grant eternal life or endless pain Our leaders became Gods, or the good right hands. God went from being part of the Earth and its people To standing apart as the grand Inquisitor and Punisher Now, I dont really mean to equate man and God, But, surely, we are not given life merely to be slaves. Even our modern ideas of God derive from old kings We must blindly love and obey, not some leader now But He who plays games with our lives and destroys at a whim What else can be the source of Gods wrath and vengeance? The Biblical portrait of God is from these long-dead kings He stands with kings. He stands with the Pope. He even stands with that ugly little North Korean twerp He stands beside the shepherd tending his sheep. But only if we worship and praise and love and obey Can we attain that most elusive of goals--immortality. We cant just be friends or co-workers and be happy God demands what infantile kings always sought. In the end, without God at their side, leaders lost power Without the voyeurism, judgments, and punishments Especially without the fear induced by loss or fire Without guilt, even God loses power over His dominion. We are still, many of us, caught in this terrible trap The quest for more always begins with loss The desire for life starts before the first breath Eternal life is the whip and the chains that bind us. Lost somewhere between the wanting and the having Lies forgotten the source of the entire enigma The discovery that more is always less for another Our fatal flaw is that enough is never sufficient. When we pretend that someone else is taking care of things We can believe that all is just part of Someones plan Surrendering our will, our love, our freedom, our lives To some awful despot who might live in a castle or heaven. The old storyteller sitting in the circle around that campfire Just tried to express his sense of awe and longing His truth was stolen from him and corrupted by those Who sought nothing but to grind the rest of us to dust. ©2013,2015 Steven W. Baker
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 11:00:27 +0000
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