A Parable in Memory of Kurt Vonnegut

[truedelphi]

Written after
1) an hour of browsing through his greatest quotes as listed on a dozen websites
2) a lifetime of being his fan


This is a story of what occurred inside an ancient period of history which thankfully has long ceased existence upon this Earth.


The Great Ice

For it was a time when the planet was affected by earth changes, and likewise the minds of the human race were seeking help from a Higher Power.

And low and behold, one race of people who were dispersed throughout the lands, decreed that the only god was the Ocean God, so each year, all of this race would travel to the Ocean. There they would kneel on the sandy beach, and touch their foreheads three times to the sand. Then they would pray: "Lord of all the Oceans, we humbly offer our every moment of life to you, as you are the Supreme Being, the Creator, the Giver and Taker, the true Decider, and we ask you to bless ourselves and our families and our crops and reward our toils and struggles. Likewise we say to you, please smite those our enemy who do not pray was we do, and who do not kneel and scrape their foreheads in the sands that You have created as the threshold of your glory."

Then this tribe would celebrate on the stretch of Sacred Beaches for several days before returning to their homes. And they were known as the Ocean Kneelers.

But a second group of people, who also accepted the teaching that the Ocean God was the Supreme God, this group also would undertake travel to the Sacred Beaches and there offer worship to the Lord. And when arriving at the beaches they would plie as though they were ballet students, arching their feet high high upon their tiptoes and totally stretch their bodies with arms raised high over their heads and then they would say, "Oh Lord of all The Oceans, and every living thing, no matter how great and no matter how small, we humbly offer every moment of life to you as you are The Supreme Being and the Creator, the Giver and the Taker, the True Decider, and we ask you
to bless ourselves and our families and our crops and reward our toils and struggles. We also insist that you smite those our enemy who do not choose to pray in the one true way that we your Chosen People have taken upon themselves. For the only true way to pray is to rise upon tiptoes and stretch out one's body and one's arms, and all other methods of prayer are insufficient to offer you praise, and must displease you, so we ask that You destroy in a terrible fashion all those others, even as you bless us. For all the days of our lives, we do pledge to stretch our poor human frames before Your glory and offer You True Adoration."

Then this tribe would celebrate on the Sacred Beaches for several days before travelling to their homes. And they were known as the Ocean Stretchers.

Also a third group of people would travel to the ocean to offer the Ocean God Most High their True Form of Worship. And they would prostrate themselves upon the warm sands, and then turn themselves onto their backs so that their faces looked at the azure zenith of the heavens. As they were a people of few words, they would intone: "Oh Lord you are Everything that is of Glory. We praise you and ask that you smite those who do not lie prostrate in the sand, as only through their hideous deaths and dismemberment will we realize that You truly love us. And should your name "Allah" be on our lips at the time of our death, then we humbly ask that You offer us seventy two virgins as you receive us into the Paradise above."

Then this tribe would celebrate on the Sacred Beaches for several days before travelling to their homes. And they were known as The Ocean Supiners.

But a fourth group of humanity also inhabited the earth at this time. They had watched the carryings on of the other three races of people, and had come to the conclusion that there may not be a God at all, Ocean or otherwise. After all, if there was a God, how could He possibly accept such shenanigans? For really, if one group thought they were superior because of their habit of kneeling, and the second group thought it best to stretch and the third accepted only the habit of lying on the sand, surely any God would see the absurdity of all this, would He not?

So this fourth group accepted that the best thing of all was to not concern themselves with Him (for after all, should the Ocean God really exist, did he even need the stylized rituals and inflated egos of those who claimed to love and understand the Almighty?) So instead they focused only on raising their children and interacting humanely with their neighbors and friends. Though in times of trouble, they might be heard to allow a prayer or two to escape from their lips, "Oh Lord. Hear me and help
me."

And it came to pass, because of the Great and Terrible Climate Change, that the ocean itself began to take more and more of the Sacred Beach away. Each year the Sacred Beach was smaller. Whereas before, it had been possible for each group of people to worship in a different season, with the Kneelers kneeling in the Spring, and the Stretchers stretching in the summer, and the Supiners
lying prayerfully in the fall, now it was necessary for all to travel to the Sacred Beaches only in the very dead of winter, when the ice had formed, as this ice created enough hard surface for the great numbers of people to all take part in the rituals they needed to perform.

The Leaders of all three religions proclaimed this ice to be The Great Ice, and they announced a new instruction to their congregations: the Great Ice would always offer support to their True and Chosen People. For God the Almighty would not allow less in the way of protection to those who worshipped him in the True and Proper Way.

Then finally during one winter season's time of worship, the leaders of all three religions had the exact same idea at the exact same time, "Why must our group of Chosen People have to share these Sacred Beaches and the Great Ice with the other peoples? For those other peoples are infidels and unholy in the eyes of the Lord, and as He has not yet chosen to smite them using all His Mercy and His Glory to do so, we should take the shrinking of the Sacred Beaches as His Sign. For clearly the Lord means that it is We who must undertake War. And it will be a Holy and a Just War, and it shall be fought to the bitter end.

"And surely at the War's conclusion, The Supreme One will take us into his Land Above and offer us a redemption that would be beyond belief and beyond any earthly glory."

So they prepared their Peoples for The Great and Just War. And it was a most hideous and awful of events, as all Great and Just Wars turn out to be. And first there was the slaughter of the Kneelers by the Stretchers, who came in to massacre them as they slept. But on a high and remote dune of Sacred Sand an outpost of Kneelers remained. This army swept in from the sand dune, and inflicted an equally severe loss of life upon the Stretchers. And then the Supiners came in to slaughter the few who were left on each side, thinking to themselves that they were to attain the Great Victory.

But it was the Great Ice that had the Final Word. It had been so weakened by all the days and weeks of pounding and thrashing from the three armies, that suddenly and intantaneously the Great Ice shattered and broke apart, sending everyone of the survivors and their attackers into the depths of the Great Blue Sea.

And there has been no word to anyone of those who were of the fourth group as to whether or not the people of any or all of the three religious groups received a Heavenly Reward of Treasures beyond Imagining. Or whether instead they found that the Ocean God was Unmoved (or perhaps amused?) at the silliness of the three Chosen Peoples turning away from Peace and plunging themselves into such Great Catastophe.

And the fourth group neither rejoiced nor lamented the demise of the other three peoples. However it must be admitted that for one brief moment, they did breathe a huge collective sigh of relief. And then immediately they turned back to the tasks at hand, raising their children and interacting humanely with their neighbors and their friends. We would know much more about what the strange turn of events allowed them to accomplish, but they were a people of little inclination to write down their history, preferring to dance and sing whenever they found a spare moment of time.

And so it goes...

And so it goes...

[Hekate]

1. Nicely wrought, truedelphi.KnR

The only thing I would change at all is reference to Allah, since the Ocean God is not otherwise named.

Good reading. :hi:

Hekate

[ellenfl]

2. cool. k&r eom

[CGowen]

3. Somehow I had to think of the easter islands..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island

[underpants]

4. So it goes

indeed

Jon Stewart had his moment of Zen last night-a short clip of Vonnegut on the Daily Show

Colbert, in his opening introductory jokes, close with "Welcome to the Monkeyhouse"

[Viva_La_Revolution]

5. oh true! That's excellent!

Okay if I send it to my e-mail list? My Mom especially will love it.
:hug:

Great job!