Γ, Wanderess, Wanderess When did you feel your most euphoric kiss? Was I the source of your greatest bliss?
We are not sheep or cows. God didnβt create fences for us or boundaries to contain our nationalities. Man did. God didnβt draw up religious barriers to separate us from each other. Man did. And on top of that, no father would like to see his children fighting or killing each other. The Creator favors the man who spreads loves over the man who spreads hate. A religious title does not make anyone more superior over another. If a kind man stands by his conscience and exhibits truth in his words and actions, he will stand by God regardless of his faith. If mankind wants to evolve, we must learn from our past mistakes. If not, our technology will evolve without us.
Humility is a virtue of the heavenly, not arrogance. Are we the most superior beast on earth? No, not in strength and not in intelligence. It is very arrogant to assume that we are the most intelligent species when we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Both rats and monkeys have been shown to learn from error, yet we have not. More people have died in the name of religion than any other cause on earth. Is massacring Godβs creations really serving God β or the devil? And what father would want to see his children constantly divided and fighting? What God would allow a single human life to be sacrificed for monetary gain? Again, the Creator or the devil?
O Heavenly Children, God's messengers are as limitless as the fish in the sea. They come in all colors, regions, languages and creeds. But their message is one and the same, don't you see? He only wishes to unite all His children under one family tree.
Stories are masks of God. That's a story, too, of course. I made it up, in collaborations with Joseph Campbell and Scheherazade, Jesus and the Buddha and the Brother's Grimm. Stories show us how to bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceiveable. Stories provide meaning, texture, layers and layers of truth. Stories can also trivialize. Offered indelicately, taken too literally, stories become reductionist tools, rendering things neat and therefore false. Even as we must revere and cherish the masks we variously create, Campbell reminds us, we must not mistake the masks of God for God. So it seemes to me that one of the most vital things we can teach our children is how to be storytellers. How to tell stories that are rigorously, insistently, beautifully true. And how to believe them.
During my childhood, I saw at least ten thousand fireflies shimmering their amber lights in the darkness and never once longed to dissect a single one to discover the source of its magic. Iβm older now, my youth behind me, and fireflies continue to fill me with the joy of childhood. I refuse to dissect their magic. We all need a miracle or two or three to cling to, and I will always cling to the miracle of fireflies on a summerβs night.