The Adamant Beetle
Hank Blakely
February 18, 2007
Reading:
Preach Me a Story, by Hank Blakely
Read by Hank Blakely
Preach me a story!
I need no sermons today.
Make it sweet or sour,
Hot or cold,
Rosy with promise,
Or red with ruin.
Preach me a story!
Speak to me of saints and
sinners,
Silk and steel,
Angels and blood,
And Upon
those bones shall I put flesh
Upon those stones will I
build me a sermon of my own.
Musical
Meditation: Suicide is Painless, Mandel and Altman
Performed
by Ben Hamblin
Through early morning fog
I see
Visions of the things to
be
The pains that are
withheld for me
I realize and I can
see...
[REFRAIN]:
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave
it if I please.
I try to find a way to
make
All our little joys
relate
Without that ever-present
hate
But now I know that it's
too late, and...
[REFRAIN]
The game of life is hard
to play
I'm gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I'll
someday lay
so this is all I have to
say...
[REFRAIN]
The sword of time will
pierce our skins
It doesn't hurt when it
begins
But as it works its way
on in
The pain grows
stronger...watch it grin, but...
[REFRAIN]
A brave man once
requested me
To answer questions that
are key
Is it to be or not to be
and I replied 'oh why ask
me?'
'Cause suicide is
painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave
it if I please.
...And you can do the
same thing if you please.
Spoken
Meditation: War – by Edwin Starr
Read
by Hank Blakely
War! What is it good for?
(...Absolutely nothing)
Non-Sermon,
The Adamant Beetle
Read
by Hank Blakely
Copyright
2001, Hank Blakely
Flute
by Ana Burgess, Guitar by Ben Hamblin
[MUSIC:
Two minutes or so of an introductory flute pastorale –
something light and sunny, i.e. the Bach Siciliano, BMW 1031]
There
once was a beetle of fierce belief who was made fidgety by the sun.
Uncertainty
makes small creatures nervous, and surely the sun is the king of
uncertain things--never in the same place twice in a day; some days
bright, some days dull, some days barely seen at all.
At
night it altogether disappears.
This
inconstancy worked on the beetle's nerves and made him intemperate.
Often, as he rolled his ball of dung back and forth across the field,
he would pause to glower indignantly at the sun: "Up or down!"
he raged, "Make up your mind!"
The
sun did not reply, for the sun is above such things.
When
he realized that he could not change the sun, he sought instead to
understand it. But the truth of the sun was elusive: It seemed near,
yet could not be grasped; seemed tiny, yet went everywhere, and
warmed all that it touched
It
had no shadow!
These
observations filled the beetle’s heart with an ocean of wonder
that threatened to capsize the fragile craft of his understanding.
And in wonder and fear he sought to anchor himself to belief.
[MUSIC:
Flute in background—light, mysterious air, i.e., Poulenc
“Cantablile from Sonata for Flute and Piano”]
Here
is what the beetle came to believe:
There
is magic in the universe.
The
magic resides in the spirits of earth and air and water, and is seen
in the winds that blow, the waters that flow, and the green that
grows from the ground.
The
spirits pass into all things of the earth, and become the souls of
the things they enter, and the sun manifests them as shadows that
crawl upon the earth—as do beetles..
The
spirits are beetles.
[MUSIC:
Flute continues for a few moments more and then stops]
From
these beliefs he derived the comfort of faith.
But
further observation provoked new questions that his compact and
straight-hearted theosophy could not explain. For example, the
shadows crawled upon the earth in the exact rhythm of the sun’s
travels through the sky. Each day, the sun rose from the ground,
flew through the sky, and at night burrowed once again into the
warmed earth.
As
though rolled by a beetle.
And
then, a wonder not wondered before: was the sun in reality a glowing
ball of dung? Or...or even more wonderful, could it be some
sort of cosmic brood-ball in which nested all the beetles yet to be
born?
What
immense eternity of a beetle might move such a thing? Surely, such a
beetle must be the Father of the universe.
And
in that single leap the beetle fell under the spell of his own
conjecture and became a home to new beliefs.
[MUSIC:
Flute in background—stronger, more assertive, i.e.,
Ibert “Entr’acte for Flute and Harp”]
This
is what the beetle now believed:
There
is magic in the universe. It resides in a single Spirit
that stirs the world, and with it the wind and the water and the
green. The Spirit is manifest in our birth and our death, and in the
dream that occurs between.
There
is Order in the universe – each event has its
moment. The sun rises, the sun sets; a beetle is born, breathes for a
time, and then is done with breath. So it is with the green, the wind
and the water, and so it is with all things.
Spirit
is the soul of the universe, Order is the hand that shapes it. And
these are inseparable and irreplaceable.
The
Sun is the emblem of the Father-Beetle, and it is given dominion over
all things of the earth
Sun,
Spirit and Order are the trinity through which we may come to know
the Father.
[MUSIC:
Flute continues for a few moments more and then stops]
From
these beliefs the beetle derived the comfort of comprehension.
*
* * * * *
But
there was little comfort to be found in his attempts to evangelize
his new belief. When he preached his epiphany, the learned elders
would hiss or spit or fling dung at him. And he quickly learned to
confine his teachings to simpler minds—and there were many of
these.
And,
little by little, the sect of the Father Beetle became the dominant
theocracy. A spider web of supposition had now become a mountain of
truth. What had begun as heresy was now infallible.
*
* * * * *
There
were of course challenges and occasional setbacks. The most
significant threat to the new orthodoxy arose in the speculation –
particularly among the young – that beetledom had descended
from the lower soft-wings; and, most controversially, that their
hard, brilliantly iridescent wing-cases were once as flimsy as
butterflies.
This
disgusting theory was received by the new faith with purest horror,
for it implied that the Father-Beetle, in whose image all were cast,
had himself evolved from vile origins, and was therefore neither
omnipotent nor eternal.
At
first, the faithful beetles thought to ignore this apostasy In hopes
that the dissidents could be brought to see the error of their ways
and return to the familiar shores of the true faith. But as the
blasphemy grew, the defenders of the faith came to demand that the
sectarian rebels be brought to trial for their heresies.
But
something went wrong. The inquiry that had begun as a simple question
of heresy quickly became a trial of greater...scope. To the dismay of
the faithful, testimony actually seemed to support the
heterodoxy. And in the end, it was only through desperate judicial
maneuvers that the heretics were at last convicted and subsequently
sentenced to desegmentation and purification by fire.
But
the damage had been done. The seeds of doubt planted in the trial
sprouted into a general disdain for mystery. Faith was outmoded, if a
thing was true then it was demonstrably true. The new Trinity
was to be Certainty, Science and, above all, Proof.
In
response, the original practitioners of the faith turned their backs
on the secular world, and became morbidly introverted and obsessed
with theological purity within their own ranks. The beetle who had
originally put forth the truth of the Father Beetle was appointed
Confessor-General of the Faith and charged with the task of finding
and rooting out doubt and disbelief, which inevitably led to more
widespread desegmenting and purification.
[MUSIC:
Guitar and vocal by Ben Hamblin: “The Story of Isaac”]
The door it opened
slowly,
my father he came in, I
was nine years old.
And he stood so tall
above me,
his blue eyes they were
shining
and his voice was very
cold.
He said, "I've had a
vision
and you know I'm strong
and holy,
I must do what I've been
told."
So he started up the
mountain,
I was running, he was
walking,
and his axe was made of
gold.
You who build these
altars now
to sacrifice these
children,
you must not do it
anymore.
You’ve never had a
vision
and you never have been
tempted
by a demon or a god.
You who stand above them
now,
your hatchets blunt and
bloody,
you were not there
before,
when I lay upon a
mountain
and my father's hand was
trembling
with the beauty of the
word.
And if you call me
brother now,
forgive me if I ask,
"according to whose
plan?"
When it all comes down to
dust
I will kill you if I
must,
I will help you if I can.
Have mercy on our
uniform,
man of peace or man of
war,
the peacock spreads his
fan.
When it all comes down to
dust
I will help you if I
must,
I will kill you if I can.
The
sheer volume of religious carnage demonstrated how easily error could
enter even the staunchest heart. The beetle now understood how evil
thrived in the modern world, and he grew fearful of its effect
upon his simple faith. And fear made him hard. He now realized that
impiety and doubt are the implacable enemies of faith, and death
their only remedy.
The
burgeoning secular movement was not blind to the growing militancy of
the faithful, and responded in kind. And as time passed, each side
became more convinced of its own truth, which it ever more loudly
proclaimed. And step by step the path to collision narrowed.
One
day, a band of secular foragers strayed – perhaps
intentionally, perhaps not--into an area regarded as sacrosanct by
the faithful– a sacrilege that was met with instant challenge.
Who
knows how these things begin? An offense is registered; tempers
flare; words are exchanged--then blows; lives are surrendered; then
both sides scream for justice or revenge – whichever is nearest
to hand, and soon opposing forces are girding for contest and, of
course, victory.
[MUSIC:
Guitar in background—steady, drum-like beat, building to
crescendo]
And
so, on a crisp fall morning, the legions of the faithful stood in
battle array before the warriors of the intellect.
The
Confessor General smiled broadly, it was a propitious day. The sun
was high and showered the followers of the true faith with light and
warmth. All about him he saw the promise of their ultimate victory,
and he envisioned the massive desegmenting that would follow his
signal to attack.
Curiously,
there was no hatred in him. He felt only love and pity for his
enemies. For those who had fallen into evil were in every sense souls
in distress. And for such as these death would come as a mercy. It
would relieve their torment, and usher them into the presence and
loving grace of the Father of heaven.
His
heart brimmed with joy as he raised his arms to give the signal that
would make death king.
[MUSIC:
Guitar stops suddenly]
Oh,
how glorious to be in the service of the Father!
[MUSIC:
[Pause, then a few bars of sad, solemn flute]
