Post by steve on Oct 1, 2023 4:28:01 GMT
The image begins to focus, and as it does, you as the audience begin to piece together the surroundings. One of the details of this space that is taken in is the atmosphere. Around you, you can't help but feel a sense of uneasiness, as if you sat in the house of someone whose name you dare not to speak; You also feel warm, as if it were a place you had been so many times through your life. The space is vast, around it are candles keeping this mute room illuminated, almost like paints mixing warm orange colors on top of a gray canvas.
Along the walls house pillars that stand as gentle arms hoisting the very sky above you. Ornate silky red banners dress each pillar with a single cross, almost like a symbol, or a sign to show you where you truly are. The image slowly moves, and in the center of this wide, quiet room sits a stage. Giant wood chairs sit in front of a giant organ, and behind the organ sits portrait. This portrait beautifully captures Mother Mary, her arms opened wide, welcoming all into her comforting bosom. But the portrait's greeting embrace seemed off. Though her arms are opened, there is a hole in her chest, and inside of the wound houses scarlet thorns, connecting together as if it were strings of sinew and arteries of her flesh.
The quietness is cold, unnerving. Clearly you figure out you sit in the house of worship, but this feeling...it's different. There is no one here to worship, no hymns, no preaching; It's as if the building was lose in a black hole where no sound could escape. Through the heavy deafness, you can't but help hear something faint. The pace of this sound seemed as if someone were approaching. Cutting through the silence, these steps were the most absolute thing you've heard since arriving. The wood of the house creaks and bends with each stride this figure steps, until it stops.
The image rises, and there on the stage stood a man. He wore a suit, which was pristine, no wrinkles defiled garments that sat on him. As your eyes wander across the image of the onyx black suit, which clashed with his white shirt and red tie, they stop on a pin on his left breast. This pin was a cross, and on the man's chest it felt as if it sat as a badge of honor, or maybe a symbol of some kind. You feel as if you could stare at it for hours, but something else catches your eyes: A stare, piercing, as if grazing past something else. These blue eyes stare, and around these eyes sat the face of a man, and this man's features were rugged, but the clean shave and slicked hair helped show a bit of his charm. His expression was curious. Though his eyes cold, the grin that formed around his bearded mouth told you otherwise. It was as if he were expecting you, as if a guest to his home. The silence would go again, and what cuts through it was a voice...
"And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward....”
...
"In my pilgrimage I have wandered, and in doing so I have had the world's word revealed to me. And it's message to me was sent by Him, and He said unto me to endure. I endured for so very long, and though the road was jagged and my cup dried, I endured nonetheless. I prayed - every night - I prayed and asked Him how much longer must I endure, and this too was a sign for when I asked my calls went silent. The loneliness that is our humanity felt like a burden that I carried alone. And so my heart began to splinter, and bleed, and fester. Each day, I began to question my faith. Blasphemy the disciples of God would hurl, but the human soul can be only stand so much attrition."
...
"And again I prayed, and again I felt nothing. The Holy Ghost did not move me as it did once before, and I sat empty. But in the void, I had time to reflect, and I began to conceptualize my circumstance. In the purgatory of my mind, it clicked."
The Preacher snaps his fingers that echo through the halls of the temple of worship, and points to the temple of his head. His eyes, widen in thought, quivering and scanning the open air as he begins to reflect on his sabbatical. The expression painted on his brow or a man who had been enlightened and found wonderment in his findings.
"There is no such thing as paradise. Yes, yes, yes there is no paradise among the clouds where the angels we imagine dance and sing to us to come to Him. There exists no such heaven. But here, among the gravel, and the soil, and the bugs, and the dung, here...this my brothers and sisters could be just that: A paradise. How glorious could it be, to never be burdened with appeasing someone based on our guilt? How releasing would it be to never feel as if our mortality be judge by a great eye that, rather be a guiding hand, is nothing but a puppeteer manipulating us by pulling our strings? There is nothing, meaningless, hollow...
But I am real.
You can touch me and feel the warmth of my cheek. When you stab me, you feel the warmth of my blood. I am solid, I am real, and I am your shepherd. I am what you have wanted for so long. I am the voice that will guide you to a paradise that you have prayed for. I hold my hands open, providing succor to the lambs, because it is my birthright. I offer you salvation, and that is a promise I can keep. Your dead will not rise, your diseases will not be cured, and I cannot offer you water but I can offer you my blood. This I swear to you, and all you have to do my lambs, my children..."
A hand is offered to you, and the coldness of The Preacher's eyes softens.
"Is take my hand."
The Preacher after giving a sermon unto his new flock slowly goes back to his cold mannerisms. He lowers his hand, and turns his back to you. He folds his hands behind his back and stares at the portrait. It's as if he doesn't even know you're there as he remains still and quiet. The temple falls silent once again, it is time to leave, and who knows...maybe you'll be back.