ReMember EmBody
I was a teen once, and I had a friend. His dad was dying. We were longhairs, Guns & Roses and Metallica types. His dad calligraphied the lyrics to Fade to Black out of his love for his son. It was kind of surreal.
I’ve been playing on YouTube again lately, most splashing around in Paul Vanderklay’s Estuary. Naturally there’s a lot of talk about faith and the like.
I’m not certain how exactly it came to pass, the details of the prevailing discussion. Heck, I barely remember the gist of it at this point, but I ended up with my attention fractured into “Jacob’s Discord.” He’s this guy, and I’m the other one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Af8dCXxnjg
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Anyway, something about that conversation brought something from my teen-time back into my mind, and for some reason it’s tied to Metallica. I think it may have been an interview James Hetfield (lead singer fella) gave about a song of theirs called Dyer’s Eve. I’m not sure, something like how Bible Faithers made childhood unpleasant or something.
The part that came to mind, however, was that I had heard a story during those times. That story gave me what turned out to be a lasting first draft of what manifestations of Faith looked like for humans.
The story was that of an old woman of faith, who lived a long and faithful life and eventually passed in her sleep. Once she did, however, the medical examiner discovered that the old bat was absolutely riddled with cancer. Everyone was surprised to hear it, as she had never seemed ill or in pain.
Of course, the story was actually told in a way that her Faith had some punch to it. I mainly keep the gists. The gist of her story was that God had spared this lady all of the suffering any of us would go through if we were all riddled with cancer. That manifestations of Faith would be experienced subjectively and refutably. Anything provable to the public, by its very nature, would cause a free-will paradox and rip existence apart.
Well, thanks for reading — and may your Faith spare you the suffering you don’t grow from.
