Spirit Storm
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SPIRITSTORM
Copyright 1996 by Malcolm B. Mathieson, Jr.
2 A planet of fire and ice, short summer and frantic agriculture, winter and bitter struggle…a constant battle for survival in a land of magic and farfuture technology…intergalactic imperialists clash with magicians in a tempest of hope and despair and misery… Did you ever read a book that made you wish you were a part of another world? Did you ever drift off to that world unknowing, slowly sink into the story, hear the clang and roar of battle, smell the smoke, wield the blade, feel the wound? Did you ever waken from the daydream leaping to your feet, shouting defiance, fists clenched, blood pounding through your veins, raging, raging at an evil foe? How foolish you felt, getting wild over an imaginary world in a book. How ridiculous to burn with anger at wrongs and treachery that never were, the fantasies of a wordsmith. And yet, and yet…as you walk away from the strange looks and the scattered snickers of mere earth-bound mortals… …still somehow the echoes of that distant world whisper in your mind, and you long to find the door… When you hear “The Impossible Dream”, do you feel as if a challenge was hurled at you? Does your pulse rate redline when you hear the wild, riotous, other-worldly music of bagpipes? When you read Lord of the Rings, did you yearn to join Frodo and Sam on their journey into Mordor? Did you mourn for the passing of Lothlorien? Did you fear for Middle-Earth? Did you shout your own battle-cry when Merry’s horn raised the Shire for the battle against the Big People? Did you cheer, or weep for joy, at the return of justice on the swords of the Fellowship of the Ring? Most of us leave our dreams behind and go off to work in “the real world”. We lose all hope of mystery and wonder. Mundane life teaches us that there aren’t any dragons and there never were, and you can’t fight city hall. We get forced into a job, and mortgage payments, and deep inside us something cries and languishes, longing for Magic and a Quest and worlds we’ve never seen. We live with rush-hour traffic and cement, but our souls hunger desperately for unicorns and enchanted forests. A local bookseller told me that adults buy for themselves most of the copies she sells of The Chronicles of Narnia. In his introduction to the Silver Anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings, Peter
3 Beagle says, “…lovers of Middle Earth want to go there [to Middle-Earth]. I would myself, like a shot.” We desire to put things right, to exercise judgment, to show mercy to the oppressed. We thirst for a greener, better, different world…and we are taught to regard these longings as beautiful, childish dreams. The world seems wrong to us, and after living without hope for a long time we get bitter, cynical, and at least a little crazy. Often it seems to be as the poet James Russell Lowell wrote, “…Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne…” If you think that the grave is your ultimate destination, your final end, you might go completely out of control. That would be bitterness beyond words, despair beyond measure, hopelessness beyond remedy. That is how so many of our beautiful fantasies were written: some skilled wordsmith could not bear looking into the Void any more, so out of the hunger of his spirit, he dreamed up a world beyond this one, wishing that somehow it might come true. But death is not the end. The grave is just the way to The Fountain of Joy, where the spirit’s deep desires are satisfied…or to The Well of Despair, where all hope is lost forever. There is evidence, you know. There are those who have been beyond death’s door, and returned. Once upon a time death’s door was forced open just a crack, just once, and then slammed shut again. But many escaped through that crack, and those who escaped left behind their testimony. It literally shook the earth, that day did. And I have the records written by some of those who saw the dead rise from their graves and visit again the ones they loved...But you think I’m just taking my turn fantasizing, don’t you? You don’t want to know about the records, do you… You do? Are you sure…? Be warned, the knowledge marks you. It will cost you. In some way, in your spirit, if you listen, you will walk in two worlds, and once you’ve done that, my friend, you cannot wholly return to the world of your birth. A part of you will remain at The Fountain Of Joy…or in The Well Of Despair. All right, then. Settle comfortably in your chair, glass in reach, fill your pipe, and when it’s burning well I’ll tell you about The Day Death Was Cheated…
4
THE DAY DEATH WAS CHEATED
copyright 1997 by Malcolm B. Mathieson, Jr.
5
THE DAY DEATH WAS CHEATED There was a man who through the undeserved favor of the Gods became a tribe. His tribe in time became a nation. The Gods chose the man and the tribe and the nation to tell the world about the Gods and to be an example of the kind of people the Gods wanted all people to be. The Gods showered favors on the man, the tribe, and the nation. This was a time of magic, so the Gods showed them strong magic in each generation, but the people were a stubborn people. They wanted life to be one long wine-drenched party. When the Prophets appointed by the Gods demanded sober living, honesty, and hard work, the people said, “We don’t need this! Let’s go back to worshipping the Moon Goddess, who doesn’t demand uncomfortable things and keeps her mouth shut when we party wild! Let some other people tell the world about the Living Gods!” As you can imagine, the Gods were a little unhappy. Crops failed, drought struck, locusts and enemies invaded, and many other subtle hints were dropped upon the people by the Gods. Often, the people saw wisdom and turned from their drunken ways back to the Gods who had chosen them.....until they stopped hurting from the last subtle hint. Then they returned to the Moon Goddess. This way of life continued for a very long time. Many people died from the subtle hints of the Gods, but after each hint faded in memory the survivors supposed that the Gods were asleep, or not watching, or away on official business, so they visited the temples of the Moon Goddess or some other local deity. Bad move. More subtle hints on the way, mortality rate on the rise..... Along with demands for sobriety, the Prophets kept mentioning a King who would be born as a citizen of this small, stubborn nation. He was called things like “the Prince of Peace” and “the Everlasting Father”. It was said that He would make this small chosen nation the rulers of the whole world, and that there would be no more war after he became King, and no one would ever make his people afraid again, and even lions would become tamer than housecats. All this sounded pretty good to a people usually suffering from the latest subtle hint, and the people never forgot a word. In fact, they wrote it all down, and measured every outstanding leader by the clues the Gods gave them to recognize this King by.
6 Several thousand years went by, and the people began to doubt that the King would come. (Who wouldn’t?) But they still remembered, and they still hoped. So when a tramp started preaching about the Kingdom of the Gods being among them, and he was able to produce strong magic like few of their ancestors had ever seen, they WOKE UP FAST! (Who wouldn’t?) This tramp was performing such strong magic that they said, “When the Anointed One comes, will he do more signs than these?” This homeless one was doing things like feeding thousands free of charge, healing all kinds of diseases, giving sight to people who had been born blind, and RAISING PEOPLE FROM THE DEAD! This tramp was also a truly good man who lived the way the Gods had been trying to persuade the entire nation to live. His honor plus his magic made him the most popular man in the nation. In fact, the people were so convinced that he was the King they’d been told about that they decided to make him King, whether he liked it or not. (You’d think all those subtle hints would have sunk in by now, wouldn’t you?) He (the tramp) knew their thoughts and left the neighborhood until they cooled down. Well, to make a long story longer, he really was the Anointed One, the King they’d been hoping for. Alas, he slew no dragons. He insisted that pure hearts were more important than whipping the stuffing out of the current invader who was crushing the life (and the money) out of the people. He was healing, feeding, and resurrecting so many people that thousands of the people (who had no medical insurance) were, like, wild about him. Now, sometime in the past couple of thousand years, the Prophets had been more or less replaced by a bunch of Priests, who had a soft, high-paying job making the people pay ($$$$$) for their sins. The Priests even invented imaginary sins to collect on. So, when this tramp/Prophet/Priest/King went into the temple of the Living Gods and threw out the crooked Priests, called them thieves and poison snakes, told them that prostitutes would get into the Kingdom of the Living Gods before they did.....they became displeased. He was messing with their money machine (not to mention their already shaky reputations). They tried to trap him legally, but for all his lack of education, he was a better lawyer than any of them. He publicly pointed out to the people the crookedness of the Priests, and the people loved it. At one point, so many people were following him that the Priests said, “We have lost! The whole world is following Him!” He wasn’t a member of their good-old-boy network. He had no social standing, and none of their pompous, artificial social graces either. Tsk tsk.
7
“Enough!” the priests said. “He must be stopped! He’s embarrassing us! He’s costing us money!!” They sent officers with a warrant to arrest him, and the cops came back without him, mumbling “We’ve never heard anyone talk like he does!” In desperation, the Priests finally made a deal with the current invader to have him tortured to death. Seems to me they might have figured out that One who could raise the dead would be a little hard to kill. Guess they panicked. They got their wish. He died slowly, and for awhile they stood around and mocked him as he was dying. They whipped him, beat him, spat on him, tore out his beard, and after all that plus at least three police interrogations lasting at least all night long, they crucified him. That’s when things started to go wrong. About noon, the whole land became dark. At noon. He hung there in the darkness until about three o’clock. Suddenly he shouted, “Why have you other two Gods forsaken me?” (He was claiming to be one of the Living Gods, you see.) Then he cried out loudly again, and surrendered his spirit. At the same moment the curtain in the temple of the Living Gods was torn in two from top to bottom! Then the earth began to shake. The rocks split apart. THE GRAVES BROKE OPEN! And the Priests knew they were doomed. The bodies of many righteous dead came back to life! They came out of the graves! Three days later the King Himself began appearing to his disciples - once to about five hundred at the same time. After he rose from the dead, those righteous ones who had been raised from the dead when he died went into the city and appeared to many people! And that’s how Death was cheated. The other two Living Gods gave this King the keys of Death, and he opened the door of The Place of the Dead on his way out.
8
The King’s disciples went around frequently repeating, “We are witnesses! We saw him, we touched him, we ate with him, after he rose from the dead!” Since the Priests were still in power, the disciples were thinned out rather quickly. But they wouldn’t recant, even when asked politely. (“Would you rather recant or feed this lion? With your body? Here, kitty, kitty...”) You can see how it would sort of be a problem to keep all this quiet. Years later, when one of the King’s disciples was on trial before a “king” of the invaders, the disciple said about this matter, “The king knows these things...I am sure these events are all familiar to him, because this thing was not done in a corner.” In one city far from the scene of the actual events, when some of the King’s disciples were found, the local Priests started a riot, saying, “Those who have turned the world upside down have come here too!” The ”Followers of the Way”, as they called themselves, had become somewhat numerous. They had converted thousands. In fact, two thousand years later, they are still around, still fanatical, still waiting for the same King to return. They claim that because they trust Him, their sins have been forgiven. They believe that he will give a pardon for all sins, eternal life, eternal health, and pleasure forever in the Kingdom of the Gods to anyone who trusts Him enough to live this life according to His commands, no matter what the cost. I know all these things because I’m one of them. You may have heard of our King. His name is Jesus.
Copyright 1996 by Malcolm B. Mathieson, Jr.
2 A planet of fire and ice, short summer and frantic agriculture, winter and bitter struggle…a constant battle for survival in a land of magic and farfuture technology…intergalactic imperialists clash with magicians in a tempest of hope and despair and misery… Did you ever read a book that made you wish you were a part of another world? Did you ever drift off to that world unknowing, slowly sink into the story, hear the clang and roar of battle, smell the smoke, wield the blade, feel the wound? Did you ever waken from the daydream leaping to your feet, shouting defiance, fists clenched, blood pounding through your veins, raging, raging at an evil foe? How foolish you felt, getting wild over an imaginary world in a book. How ridiculous to burn with anger at wrongs and treachery that never were, the fantasies of a wordsmith. And yet, and yet…as you walk away from the strange looks and the scattered snickers of mere earth-bound mortals… …still somehow the echoes of that distant world whisper in your mind, and you long to find the door… When you hear “The Impossible Dream”, do you feel as if a challenge was hurled at you? Does your pulse rate redline when you hear the wild, riotous, other-worldly music of bagpipes? When you read Lord of the Rings, did you yearn to join Frodo and Sam on their journey into Mordor? Did you mourn for the passing of Lothlorien? Did you fear for Middle-Earth? Did you shout your own battle-cry when Merry’s horn raised the Shire for the battle against the Big People? Did you cheer, or weep for joy, at the return of justice on the swords of the Fellowship of the Ring? Most of us leave our dreams behind and go off to work in “the real world”. We lose all hope of mystery and wonder. Mundane life teaches us that there aren’t any dragons and there never were, and you can’t fight city hall. We get forced into a job, and mortgage payments, and deep inside us something cries and languishes, longing for Magic and a Quest and worlds we’ve never seen. We live with rush-hour traffic and cement, but our souls hunger desperately for unicorns and enchanted forests. A local bookseller told me that adults buy for themselves most of the copies she sells of The Chronicles of Narnia. In his introduction to the Silver Anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings, Peter
3 Beagle says, “…lovers of Middle Earth want to go there [to Middle-Earth]. I would myself, like a shot.” We desire to put things right, to exercise judgment, to show mercy to the oppressed. We thirst for a greener, better, different world…and we are taught to regard these longings as beautiful, childish dreams. The world seems wrong to us, and after living without hope for a long time we get bitter, cynical, and at least a little crazy. Often it seems to be as the poet James Russell Lowell wrote, “…Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne…” If you think that the grave is your ultimate destination, your final end, you might go completely out of control. That would be bitterness beyond words, despair beyond measure, hopelessness beyond remedy. That is how so many of our beautiful fantasies were written: some skilled wordsmith could not bear looking into the Void any more, so out of the hunger of his spirit, he dreamed up a world beyond this one, wishing that somehow it might come true. But death is not the end. The grave is just the way to The Fountain of Joy, where the spirit’s deep desires are satisfied…or to The Well of Despair, where all hope is lost forever. There is evidence, you know. There are those who have been beyond death’s door, and returned. Once upon a time death’s door was forced open just a crack, just once, and then slammed shut again. But many escaped through that crack, and those who escaped left behind their testimony. It literally shook the earth, that day did. And I have the records written by some of those who saw the dead rise from their graves and visit again the ones they loved...But you think I’m just taking my turn fantasizing, don’t you? You don’t want to know about the records, do you… You do? Are you sure…? Be warned, the knowledge marks you. It will cost you. In some way, in your spirit, if you listen, you will walk in two worlds, and once you’ve done that, my friend, you cannot wholly return to the world of your birth. A part of you will remain at The Fountain Of Joy…or in The Well Of Despair. All right, then. Settle comfortably in your chair, glass in reach, fill your pipe, and when it’s burning well I’ll tell you about The Day Death Was Cheated…
4
THE DAY DEATH WAS CHEATED
copyright 1997 by Malcolm B. Mathieson, Jr.
5
THE DAY DEATH WAS CHEATED There was a man who through the undeserved favor of the Gods became a tribe. His tribe in time became a nation. The Gods chose the man and the tribe and the nation to tell the world about the Gods and to be an example of the kind of people the Gods wanted all people to be. The Gods showered favors on the man, the tribe, and the nation. This was a time of magic, so the Gods showed them strong magic in each generation, but the people were a stubborn people. They wanted life to be one long wine-drenched party. When the Prophets appointed by the Gods demanded sober living, honesty, and hard work, the people said, “We don’t need this! Let’s go back to worshipping the Moon Goddess, who doesn’t demand uncomfortable things and keeps her mouth shut when we party wild! Let some other people tell the world about the Living Gods!” As you can imagine, the Gods were a little unhappy. Crops failed, drought struck, locusts and enemies invaded, and many other subtle hints were dropped upon the people by the Gods. Often, the people saw wisdom and turned from their drunken ways back to the Gods who had chosen them.....until they stopped hurting from the last subtle hint. Then they returned to the Moon Goddess. This way of life continued for a very long time. Many people died from the subtle hints of the Gods, but after each hint faded in memory the survivors supposed that the Gods were asleep, or not watching, or away on official business, so they visited the temples of the Moon Goddess or some other local deity. Bad move. More subtle hints on the way, mortality rate on the rise..... Along with demands for sobriety, the Prophets kept mentioning a King who would be born as a citizen of this small, stubborn nation. He was called things like “the Prince of Peace” and “the Everlasting Father”. It was said that He would make this small chosen nation the rulers of the whole world, and that there would be no more war after he became King, and no one would ever make his people afraid again, and even lions would become tamer than housecats. All this sounded pretty good to a people usually suffering from the latest subtle hint, and the people never forgot a word. In fact, they wrote it all down, and measured every outstanding leader by the clues the Gods gave them to recognize this King by.
6 Several thousand years went by, and the people began to doubt that the King would come. (Who wouldn’t?) But they still remembered, and they still hoped. So when a tramp started preaching about the Kingdom of the Gods being among them, and he was able to produce strong magic like few of their ancestors had ever seen, they WOKE UP FAST! (Who wouldn’t?) This tramp was performing such strong magic that they said, “When the Anointed One comes, will he do more signs than these?” This homeless one was doing things like feeding thousands free of charge, healing all kinds of diseases, giving sight to people who had been born blind, and RAISING PEOPLE FROM THE DEAD! This tramp was also a truly good man who lived the way the Gods had been trying to persuade the entire nation to live. His honor plus his magic made him the most popular man in the nation. In fact, the people were so convinced that he was the King they’d been told about that they decided to make him King, whether he liked it or not. (You’d think all those subtle hints would have sunk in by now, wouldn’t you?) He (the tramp) knew their thoughts and left the neighborhood until they cooled down. Well, to make a long story longer, he really was the Anointed One, the King they’d been hoping for. Alas, he slew no dragons. He insisted that pure hearts were more important than whipping the stuffing out of the current invader who was crushing the life (and the money) out of the people. He was healing, feeding, and resurrecting so many people that thousands of the people (who had no medical insurance) were, like, wild about him. Now, sometime in the past couple of thousand years, the Prophets had been more or less replaced by a bunch of Priests, who had a soft, high-paying job making the people pay ($$$$$) for their sins. The Priests even invented imaginary sins to collect on. So, when this tramp/Prophet/Priest/King went into the temple of the Living Gods and threw out the crooked Priests, called them thieves and poison snakes, told them that prostitutes would get into the Kingdom of the Living Gods before they did.....they became displeased. He was messing with their money machine (not to mention their already shaky reputations). They tried to trap him legally, but for all his lack of education, he was a better lawyer than any of them. He publicly pointed out to the people the crookedness of the Priests, and the people loved it. At one point, so many people were following him that the Priests said, “We have lost! The whole world is following Him!” He wasn’t a member of their good-old-boy network. He had no social standing, and none of their pompous, artificial social graces either. Tsk tsk.
7
“Enough!” the priests said. “He must be stopped! He’s embarrassing us! He’s costing us money!!” They sent officers with a warrant to arrest him, and the cops came back without him, mumbling “We’ve never heard anyone talk like he does!” In desperation, the Priests finally made a deal with the current invader to have him tortured to death. Seems to me they might have figured out that One who could raise the dead would be a little hard to kill. Guess they panicked. They got their wish. He died slowly, and for awhile they stood around and mocked him as he was dying. They whipped him, beat him, spat on him, tore out his beard, and after all that plus at least three police interrogations lasting at least all night long, they crucified him. That’s when things started to go wrong. About noon, the whole land became dark. At noon. He hung there in the darkness until about three o’clock. Suddenly he shouted, “Why have you other two Gods forsaken me?” (He was claiming to be one of the Living Gods, you see.) Then he cried out loudly again, and surrendered his spirit. At the same moment the curtain in the temple of the Living Gods was torn in two from top to bottom! Then the earth began to shake. The rocks split apart. THE GRAVES BROKE OPEN! And the Priests knew they were doomed. The bodies of many righteous dead came back to life! They came out of the graves! Three days later the King Himself began appearing to his disciples - once to about five hundred at the same time. After he rose from the dead, those righteous ones who had been raised from the dead when he died went into the city and appeared to many people! And that’s how Death was cheated. The other two Living Gods gave this King the keys of Death, and he opened the door of The Place of the Dead on his way out.
8
The King’s disciples went around frequently repeating, “We are witnesses! We saw him, we touched him, we ate with him, after he rose from the dead!” Since the Priests were still in power, the disciples were thinned out rather quickly. But they wouldn’t recant, even when asked politely. (“Would you rather recant or feed this lion? With your body? Here, kitty, kitty...”) You can see how it would sort of be a problem to keep all this quiet. Years later, when one of the King’s disciples was on trial before a “king” of the invaders, the disciple said about this matter, “The king knows these things...I am sure these events are all familiar to him, because this thing was not done in a corner.” In one city far from the scene of the actual events, when some of the King’s disciples were found, the local Priests started a riot, saying, “Those who have turned the world upside down have come here too!” The ”Followers of the Way”, as they called themselves, had become somewhat numerous. They had converted thousands. In fact, two thousand years later, they are still around, still fanatical, still waiting for the same King to return. They claim that because they trust Him, their sins have been forgiven. They believe that he will give a pardon for all sins, eternal life, eternal health, and pleasure forever in the Kingdom of the Gods to anyone who trusts Him enough to live this life according to His commands, no matter what the cost. I know all these things because I’m one of them. You may have heard of our King. His name is Jesus.
