The Lady in Red

Death and Taxes

The physical nature of life … exacts a heavy toll on occasion. A soldier trained to defend the country … a boy growing up in a rough neighborhood … school … and sometimes … contact sports … can bring about injuries … that leaves a scar … long after their time. However … on each of these occasions … its intimated that … its about the lady in red. That's called a stretch … when we drag the notion of death … to relate to the eros impulses.

I've never heard a man … say a bad word about God … when he's breezing his life … with self-vanity and games. But ask a man … who has sacrificed everything he has … for the love of God … and you'll detect … a dissatisfaction … that is mute and silent. For the injuries that come from the notion of physical contact with God … take away our speech … our mind … and quite often … our love for what is plainly simple in life.

God as the one … who knows everything … is engaged to explain … the inexplicable. And after a prolonged practice … of self-assurance … through the ages … we come to the unexpected bitterness of unripe fruits … in our realization … that it may not be so. How do we first encounter it? … suspect the possibility … in our slowly disintegrating … passions … and watch the gradual … consumption of the faith … in the growing fire of disbelief.

' The Lord is my shepherd … I shall not want ' … from Psalm 23 … is a poignant … statement of training the mind … as strong as Navy Seals … swimming half-naked in freezing water. ' In God we trust ' … on the currency of our commerce … extends the concept to everything we do. When the reckoning of faith comes … the man may be out on the street corner … with simply his shirt on his back. Training? … surely … there's a better word.

Our vampire stories … tell only half the story … in an exposition of the incredulous fears … we encounter … in the trials of love and the passions. The best … story I ever heard … was about this man in Jerusalem … they called the Christ. Beautifully set out … a true reflection of the trials of faith. It is nothing less … than the overt denial of faith … in the life of one man … who believed … and ended in a bloody bath … of retribution … by those … who no longer did. That is sadly … the meaning of the proverbial … Lady in Red.

Do we then return to recover the faith? Surely if we have shot the b*****d … napalmed his village … and daisy wheeled his mountain … its going to be hard to … also to wish him … ' Great weather … we are having. '  And this … is the scenario … in that quaint little place … we call the middle-east … where neighbors live alongside … those who believe and those who don't … and vice-versa. Would bringing some coherence to the issue help?

What power brings itself to sow … such a state of confusion? And in our recovery from it … do we get to be more savvy? Smarter … more mean … and we inflict the greatest pains on our person … to make ourselves stronger? Patricia Hearst … the kidnapped heiress … by the SLA … turned and joined up with her captors. I don't know how much a believer she was before … but she certainly became a non-believer after.

I'm not raising these issues … as an elaboration … for the unnamed evils we encounter. I'm engaging in a discourse … with those … who have a reputation for intelligence … and who would love to apply themselves … to such a riddle. What lies at the bottom … of our minds … that is neither friend nor foe … and is the heartbeat of life? How do we … in all fairness … come to represent that … in our speech and social discourse?

A society … trained to be intelligent bears a responsibility … in the world. And where the rest of the world … is tossing missiles … into their neighbor's backyard … a person would expect … that leadership in society … would bring itself to handling such an issue … with the delicate attitude … of problem solving … in an area of passions … notorious for its fickleness. And to understand from there … that we once worshiped the God of fickleness … as joy.

On the Northwest coast of Scotland … lies a group of islands … they have named the ' Hebrides.' No doubt it was an age when we viewed man … as the bride of God ... but in these times … we are probably showing him the finger. On one of the giant rocky outcrops … is the phenomenon … the locals have named ' Fingal's Cave ' … perhaps it should have been ' Fickle's Cathedral.' Isn't it a pity that we rely so much on being fickle … yet have not built a cathedral to it?

A wise man in these times … saves himself … from meeting the Lady in red … by being fickle. There are a few ladies I know … who manage that very well. But while its great for preventing cramps … its not-so-good … for relationships. To improve upon that … a man of knowledge … may today examine … the historical basis … for the greatest fickle nature we have yet seen - the duplication of the Greek Gods of the pantheon … by the Romans. It manages fickle.