Lucif: Who am I?
Jah: I don’t know. Are you a Watcher who fell in love with earth women? Did you seduce these poor mortals with beautiful forms, powerful strides, and learned, honey-dripping words? Did you and your fellow sensualists sneak down from heaven into their dewy hills and fertile valleys?
Lucif: Did I? And did they bear me healthy, powerful, magical sons and daughters? Or were my children giant beasts that devoured all human, animal, and vegetable life in their path?
Jah: Hard to say now. Maybe it wasn’t so bad? Maybe you were just tired of being only spiritual, and so you tried on human forms and human senses, and so you fell in love with what you could see, smell, taste, and touch, and most of all with human women, for they blossom into flowers that live and breath, that love and that hold and give way, that make a home, that are a heaven for those of the earth, those who are born into flesh and so must die into it.
Lucif: Oh, yes, maybe that was it. Maybe we couldn’t help but come in unto the daughters of men, and what we knew bore us children — children were strong and pure, the mighty men of old, the men of renown.
Jah: But then again perhaps we shouldn’t be so eager to settle on a happy account. I’ve also heard rumors that you rebelled against me, that you wanted to be God yourself, and so waged a crazed and disastrous war on I am that I am.
Lucif: Could be! I wouldn’t put it past me! Existing outside of time and space but while witnessing all times and spaces does play tricks on one’s spirit and thought. It could be that I, or someone so much like me that we’re both now confusing this other angel with me — it could be that I or someone who we may as well consider me: It could be that we got ginned up on some saucy, stray, wandering notion about how You were not so much special as lucky, and how we weren’t so much lesser as tricked and conned into subservient roles.
Jah: Maybe, and shame on you, or him, or both of you, or somebody, anyway, if that is the case! But let’s not jump to conclusions like wild beasts, or as savage warriors in the mindless rush of frays that falling crash like tidal waves over gentle, delicate villages of thatched huts, abundant fruits, pleasing warmth, and easy fishing. Because I have also heard that you asked permission to go among the sons and daughters of man to lead those astray who could be so diverted from the holy way — for great is their wickedness, and so great should be fall.
Lucif: Really? Is that something You might countenance? Might you collaborate in the corruption of your beloved children? Perhaps, as a means for weeding out those who would bring hidden curses, hidden crimes, hidden cruelties to heaven? Maybe it’s best to tempt them all well and soundly on earth, lest some with easy lives might enter Your glorious eternity with souls that were not so much wise as they were lucky to not be well-sounded, full-tested, and thorough-proofed?
Jah: Maybe. I mean, no, not like that. But maybe I let everything happen so that souls might learn and in the fulness of time, all souls might be made pure through the fire of trial and error. For men are not born knowing, but in time, by seeking, they learn.
The Son of Man: They’re born knowing, but the knowledge is disconnected from their thoughts and feelings — which are at birth amorphous and incapable of catching or communicating insight.
Jah: What are you doing here?
The Son of Man: I couldn’t leave the Rez. The wider world was too loud and boring. I needed the silence of the sun on the high rocky desert, the sand and sandstone, the scraggle brush, Joshua Trees, and junipers.
Lucif: This isn’t a Native American Reservation, this is Heaven.
The Holy Spirit: We are everywhere and nowhere, this boy and I. I as ghost and he as lithe-limbed soul we wander the earth, her seas, the skies, the stars, and even old heaven.
The Son of Man: But I don’t want to leave the Rez. I hear we’re living in God’s favorite nation, but I didn’t think my Father was like that — Humans take sides, have favorites, center their worlds around their notions — but my Father is wide enough for everyone, and every role is identical: To slowly grow in the Love that alone Knows the Way.
Jah: Will you get a load of these two hippies?!
Lucif: There’s evil afoot in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
Jah: But I let evil work its way as it will everywhere. I do not favor nations or peoples. I am the Light that overwhelms the darkness — every darkness, every lie, every ego-trip, every hope and every fear, every moment of selfish greed or pride, every little dip in the joy that streams out each conscious space the joy of the Love that chooses everyone and is enough for everyone with infinite joyful grateful Love left over.
Lucif: How do I play it? Am I an agent of the darkness, or just some love-struck Romeo who can’t keep his sacred line out of her sacred well, my home, my wife, my dear one?
Jah: I don’t know. Search yourself. I, for One, am Creation. I stand outside of time and space. Human history and the history of countless worlds and countless universes I experience and am all at once — in a moment that hangs outside of time and space, in a moment within beginning or end, in my moment, in the moment that is Pure Love.
The Son of Man: Pure Love? Ah that old tune! Still giggling on and on. None of the gods nor humans made it, but it was and ever will be, an eternal fire that when mixed with this spice tastes this way; and with that spice, that way.
Lucif: But I want to have a script! Or at least a sketch of my role! Do I go down into their hearts and encourage their delusions of grandeur? Do I hep them up on the jive that somehow lying, cheating, cruelty, and meanness are part of God’s plan for his chosen nation? Or do I leave them be, do I walk with my wife alone along the sandy shore with fluffy clouds in a blue sky overhead, while up the jagged craggy cliff roam fluffy sheep through thick dark green pasture?
The Holy Ghost: I, for One, will do nothing but glow with the Love that chooses everyone. If they want to pretend that holy Love would reward the impulse towards lies and meanness, towards corruption and crime: So be it; but I will stay and I will shine and I will work through every heart and every mind. In the fulness of time.
The Son of Man: They forget how to build walls around their faiths. They forget themselves in their name calling and need to justify. But this old news. Still, it’s a shame to see the forum die, to see their voices bend to the lie. First they let him lead while lying. Then they let him force them to lie to be in the party. Next up would be another upside down land, the same old story: Shut your mouth, turn a blind eye, let the rot fester; or else lose your life, your wife, your children’s chances.
Lucif: But what’s my play? Do I want them to bluster, brag, bully, and blunder their way into a system that rewards sin and punishes virtue? If I’m out to undermine the Lord God Almighty’s will, then I guess I’d hope for that. Since almost everyone is only too quick to say, “well, I have to look out for me and mine” while selling out the few who would stick up for the system of radical equality under a careful law.
Jah: Whatever you do, that’s My will. There is only My will. But it’s not so bleak as it sounds. For you are all only Me. To the extent that you are Me qua the historical unfolding of mental and physical thump and bump, you are like stones and snow ledges falling down hills, or like trees falling, thudding, bouncing slightly, and then slowly decaying and in pieces dissolving through the winds and rains. To the extent that you are Me qua a mental and physical interpretation of the Light shining through each moment, you are First Cause, are Free, are your Truest Self — a selfless Love that creates, sustains, shines through, and ultimately Is all things.
Lucif: Yes, I’m You to the degree I don’t lie to myself about the Light shining through me and everyone and everything else. To be sure, to be sure! But what do I do here and now?
Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andy Watson
