"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me."
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
"When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break."
Akhenaton (d. c.1354 BC)
And now, the current weather, from some random person we pulled off the street:
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Fallen
weep Function: verb
Inflected Form(s): wept /'wept/; weep?ing
Etymology: Middle English wepen, from Old English wEpan; akin to Old High German wuoffan to weep, Old Church Slavonic vabiti to call to
transitive senses
1 : to express deep sorrow for usually by shedding tears : BEWAIL
2 : to pour forth (tears) from the eyes
3 : what the world makes my Spirit do
[First person narration]
Sometimes, all I can feel is tears.
Not tears for me, understand. Tears for you, for all of us.
There are so many people who are hurting so badly, in so many places and in so many ways. Each of us with our own personal wounds that we think no one else could possibly understand.
[Music rises in background, George Harrison singing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps."]
I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and i see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps
I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold your love
I don't know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you.
[Volume down, back to narration]
Inside I weep.
I weep from empathy, from knowing how badly it can hurt.
I weep because I know that all of this suffering is needless.
I weep in my helplessness, unable to come to the rescue, powerless in the face of a fallen world.
[music rises again, resuming with second verse]
I look at the world and i notice it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps
[Again, music fades, narration resumes]
Some Biblical scholars say we have been here 6,000 years. Secular archeologists place that number far higher. But, in all this time, have we learned to stop the pain?
No, and we never will, not as humans.
And I weep for that, I weep at our fallen destiny. We jump and we jump and we jump, and even the best of us will never reach the sky, never get more than a few feet from the ground.
Our fall is our curse, and without God we will live with that curse forever.
[music resumes]
I dont know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I dont know how you were inverted
No one alerted you.
[music fades yet again, narration takes over]
Our problem is evil itself.
That is where our fall has taken us, and that is where we now live, as humans. We are fallen creatures without any hope at all of standing on our own.
Around me, so many people, so many, struggling for all they are worth to stand on their own, to cast off the shackles of evil that are upon them. And all of them finally collapse under the weight. No matter how valiant, no matter how charged with purpose, each one will inevitably fall. Even, and especially, those who cry "Look at me, God! I'm trying to stand for you!" And they fall also, since their efforts are under their own power, and fall they must.
I weep for them, for I have felt that unwilling surrender myself, many times.
Our sense of justice is offended at what surrounds us, and it should be because there is no justice in it at all.
We are turned inside out from what we were created to be, and we suffer. "Why?" we cry, yet the answer is as close as our heart.
And in the darkness, a light.
Rescue.
God.
[music rises one last time]
I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
Look at you all . . .
Still my guitar gently weeps.
[Music fades to silence.]
Yet, until that which is imperfect is made perfect, until God's plan is complete and all is new again, until humanity stops worshipping the most evil one there is, until then...
I will be a lantern. I will help whoever I may.
And I will weep.
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830)
