“Teacher? I need some help here.” In the ceaselessly moving class no two students looked remotely alike. The questioner was so pale as to seem invisible.
“Certainly. Is it the Morfe you have trouble understanding?”
“No, I think I can wrap my mind around them. Like Michael. He is challenge, and everywhere there is challenge he's there.”
“Do not forget that he also is Michael and as alive and aware as you are.”
“You're right. I do have trouble keeping both in mind at once.”
“You always will. I still have trouble myself.”
The students' slower dance thought this over.
The pale pupil continued: “It is the Mudones that utterly confuse me. To begin with, how can they be and then not be? That's backwards. And nature is being is life. Do they lose their nature? And...”
“One question at a time,” the Teacher laughed—or something a little like laughter. “Some of this is easy. They share a nature, but instead of each being a unique kind, they unite the shared nature with portions of the non-knowing mud. Since the nature of the mud includes separability, there can thus be many of them.”
“That's odd. But how can the union fail and they not be? How can that power just vanish?”
The little group respected the Teacher's dimming.
“I do not know,” he finally said. “It is like the lost Morfe and Edoli.”
The pupil with the glowing green rings signaled for attention. “Question: Are the Mudones also lost, but because of the mud it does not happen at once?”
“Wait,” said another. “What does 'at once' mean?”
“Examine section 3 on actions of the non-knowing, the first limit case,” Green Rings answered.
“That is almost certainly part of the reason,” said the Teacher, “But there is more. Something is happening: the Glorious One (blessed be he) has intervened.”
“Tell!” they called.
“Let us ask an eyewitness to do that. Gabriel!”
Gabriel never fails to capture your attention. The pupils repeated their request, but sounded much more subdued.
“Please tell us what the Glorious One is doing with the Mudones.”
“He has spoken to them. I have been sent many times and spoken to many different Mudones. They move against their nature to their own destruction, and He gave warnings and directions.”
“Does 'destruction' mean not-being?”
“It is worse, because their union is contradicted. They call it suffering. As you see here,” as Gabriel illuminated the far end of the Mudone line for them, “In the end their contradictions are folded on themselves and isolated from everything.”
He went on. “The Glorious One became one of them.”
The Teacher, startled, interjected “He became one of them? A portion of mud was united with the Glorious One? Then that mud is forever blessed—where is it?”
“The others destroyed it, and Him.”
“That is not possible. He cannot not-be; He above all cannot contradict His own union. Nothing would be.” Green Rings objected.
“He was and He did. The union was remade, and then withdrawn. And then He established a new pneumos union with the Mudone nature; with the spirits of those who sometimes clung to Him. They often try to break the pneumos union too.”
“This makes no sense,” said the Teacher. “How does being contradicted and destroyed help anything?”
“I do not understand it either. But as you saw in the end, not all of them were lost. What He remade works.”
“Does he remake a broken pneumos union too? The lost Edoli broke theirs too,” the pale pupil ventured.
“I have not been told.”
“I do not like to look at the Mudones,” winced the student with three wings. “There is too much wrong.”
“Most are wrong,” agreed Gabriel. “Some are unendurably blessed. Blessing and wrong go mixed there.”
“How can these things be together?”
“When it is ripe we may hear it from the Mudones. If you come to understand it, please explain it to me,” said Gabriel, and he was gone.
The Teacher looked at his pupils. “May it be ripe soon. For now, apparently we need to review section 3.”
5 comments:
I have miniscule Latin and no Greek; I cribbed the quote from the link. I'd read this post and during carol singing at church wondered how much the herald angels understood of what was going on.
Perhaps someday I'll recast the idea with better action into a better story.
So it is yours, then? It's quite good. I didn't pick up who was speaking for quite some time. I imagine that was your intent.
It has something of the Oyarsa, or the residents of the other planets, in the Perelandra series in its tone.
Thank you. Yes, that was my intent--I didn't want the automatic associations that come with the word.
Even more like Madeline L'Engle, now that I reflect.
Another favorite
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