Not too long ago, under the context of a discussion surrounding James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, my ears perked up to the momentous event of a question—“What’s the point of religion if I’m satisfied with my life without it?”
Unfortunately, this is one of those questions which everybody and anybody wants to answer, and there’s no easy way to separate the wheat from the chaff. Poised as I was to give a certain parable I had been playing with for months regarding this very question, the whole stage had been overtaken by the docent leading our discussion, who chose the strategy of merely ironizing the girl who asked, “Isn’t your life so great!” Following this (to put it mildly) unhelpful scene, I tried in vain to give the parable in private, yet found that there didn’t even seem to be genuine interest in listening on behalf of the original asker! How relatable are the words of the prophets—
because seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.
I figured then, I shall not let my words all fall on deaf ears, so I write this for those of you who truly hunger and thirst.
Under a Sweltering Sun
quae facilem ori paret bolum
In ancient days, a burgeoning market-town sees one of its many merchants trying to sell his wares. Novel trade-routes in the Aegean sea have brought newfound opulence to his catalogs, putting him in quite the gleeful mood for the year. What is better, his first-born son has finally come of age to become his apprentice, a path which will eventually lead to him inheriting the family business.
Another day of bargaining comes. The merchant begins to bargain alongside his son– and quite a diligent son at that. In full conscientiousness, he attentively gazes on each action of his father’s as if it were the primordial Truth of reality, the very laws by which he too shall, one day, continue the practice of the family business. The boy picked this up as soon as he came of age, that he need not merely float in the pool he was born into, but can try and swim. Most exhilarating of all, he has even begun to subtly pick up from the older boys on certain words, certain inflections which get the laugh from his own chums, finally hitting upon that recognition he is starting to crave.
Potential customers from all corners of the sea walk up to the wares, inspect them, and inquire.
The merchant, seeing one of his potential customers pick up and inspect an especially opulent good, begins to become rather irritable. In a flashback to his own boyhood days, spent watching his own father bargain, he remembered the furrowed brow his father wore when customers intimately handled luxury goods.
Our merchant, driven by the memory of his father, augments the furrowed brow and lashes out at the customer— “Fool! Leave the ware unblemished by your touch.” A verbal altercation occurs. At some indeterminate point in their insulting match, the customer abruptly produces some concealed feces— smears it all over the quarreled-over ware— and dashes away. Possessed by rage, the merchant lobs the now-stinking ware after the customer, marginally missing and hitting instead a venerated woman, selfless from birth to the community. He is promptly beaten by all surrounding parties in the periphery, his son watching helplessly.
With the aftermath of this disaster tearing apart their family, the bereaved and confused son flees from his whole world in the coastal market-town, toward the isolated mountains further inland. “Why me of all boys now?” his thoughts raced, “Why my household when wine abounds in the houses of all the others? Where was the premonition? Was it so arbitrary that this befell us?”.
To his right, he noticed men stirring to and fro between the slits of trees, and some muffled noise emanating from the same direction. Peering through an aperture in the trees, he saw a tight-knit group of men heaving chiseled stones up the mountain, unbothered by the sweltering sun, singing songs about the great healer, Ἀσκληπιός. He put together what they were doing, at once joining their efforts. Week following week, he began to meditate on who they called ‘the great healer’, chants about his great patience and meekness, his willingness to heal anyone regardless of class, and many other qualities. Our boy went on to be inducted into the community of believers, accepting a strict code of conduct to reflect his commitment to the great healer.
After a year, the boy returns to his family and finds them in utter destitution and despair. He also finds that some of his former chums, those especially related to the selfless woman, don’t understand him anymore. His cousins above all though, ask him to tell them more about the great healer.
Fin.
Threshing Floor 