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SUSTAINABILITY, EQUITY, DEVELOPMENT SOMETHING ELSE: Survival Is Not An Option CHAPTER NINE - 1981
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A man served in the
senior most elected position of a city at the foot of an ancient and
sacred mountain range. The town and the mountains formed the entire
world. No other cities existed. Deeply religious, the citizens of the
town considered the mountain range sacred, and they believed God lived
at the top in a great white house. His office had the title: Governor. The community's governance, unchanged for recorded history, had a secular government and one religion most followed with passion. The church had the equivalent of a president or pope and a hierarchy of clergy. Everyone supported strict separation of church and state. The boundaries had been respected for thousands of years. The governor did not have the faith, and in this world, no one cared. He was elected for his ability to handle the secular affairs of business development and community infrastructure, which included law enforcement, the administration of the economy and commerce, regulation of organizations as agreed by law, and the day-to-day issues of the community. |
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Protocol to replace the church leader involved
the sacred mountains. The Council of Twelve operated below the leader, and they
were the candidates to fill the position upon the leader's death. They prayed
and asked God for inspiration. The person receiving inspiration would tell the
other eleven, and they granted permission to enter the sacred mountain range to
seek the House of God. The candidate could only begin the ascent at the break of
dawn. The candidate had to obtain God's council, and then return to the City by
sunset that same day. If the sun set and the candidate had not returned, the
inspiration had been false. Candidates who did not return by sundown did not
return at all. The church leader
died. Businesses closed, government shut down, the believers grieved and held
ceremonies while the twelve prayed for inspiration. After three days one of the
twelve came forward. At dawn the next morning, he headed up the forbidden trail.
At dusk a large crowd had formed awaiting his return. Festivities and ancient
traditions kept the believers focused. The town prayed all day. The late night news reported of the apparent death of the first candidate and the continued praying for the remaining eleven. Another candidate stepped forward. He arrived at the forbidden gate an hour before sunrise. He prayed for an hour as many of the faithful watched. The instant sunlight appeared, he charged up the path toward the house of God. The city was paralyzed. Everyone talked about the candidate, what might happen, what his ascendancy might mean, and his chances of his return. The sun set. Still no candidate. The governor's phone rang, "Something is
wrong, sir, and you need to do something." A third candidate stepped forward, one of the four women on the council. (In this world, no role distinction existed based on gender, and numerous women had been governor or led the church over the thousands of years.) She wore sacred garments and prayed before dawn. At dawn, she headed up the forbidden path. Again, everyone waited. Again, the sun set. She had not returned. Now the phone calls grew intense and dramatically increased in number. The people demanded the governor do something. Some fanatic or heretical group had violated sacred ground to attack the ascending clergy. The governor had to handle these murderers. Through all of this world's recorded history, the idea of the governor's position exerting influence on the church was tantamount to the most grotesque violation of law. The governor exclaimed, "I have neither authority nor responsibility!" A fourth candidate came forward, ascended the mountains, and did not return. The town descended to the brink of anarchy. Talk of organized vigilante groups developed, and the town screamed chaotically at each other and in unison for leadership. Who were they screaming at? The governor. Okay. Allowing an unauthorized mob to charge into the range could not be tolerated under any circumstances. How could he survive the situation? Was survival an option? He agonized. He chose to meet with the remaining eight on the council, none of whom seemed particularly inspired to ascend the mountains. What did they support? The consensus was that something indeed had gone wrong, and that a secular force armed with weapons should enter the mountains and resolve the situation. This was politically dangerous. The council's permission was not sufficient, so the governor AND the council went on television. His speech was short and simple. The council had recommended action. Did the community also support this? While a few die-hard religious fanatics voiced that such action would be a desecration, the response was overwhelmingly in favor of his intervention. Clearly, almost all believed something had gone wrong. Someone armed needed to clear the sacred path. On Earth the endeavor would have been handled by the police or the armed forces. But this wasn't Earth, so the governor had to go himself, armed with an assault rifle, a pistol and gear and provisions. Thinking he would not have to go very far, he made plans to head into the hills at noon the next day. The council reacted sharply. Protocol called for ascension to begin at dawn. Dawn? The governor hadn't gotten up before dawn in fourteen years. Okay, fine. So the next day he awoke at an insane hour and made it to the forbidden path before dawn. He ceded authority to the appropriate individuals, and when the sun broke on the horizon, up the hills he went. He walked quickly at first, alert but still a little groggy. The coffee kicked in as he carried a cup in one hand and the rifle in the other. The trail was not difficult to follow, but after awhile it began to get steeper. After about 30 minutes, he became so absorbed in the climb that he forgot to consider that someone or something dangerous awaited. He just kept climbing. The climb turned into a formidable hike. Hours passed, and he grew more exhausted. By 1 p.m. he had still encountered nothing. If he wished to return before sunset, he had to turn around now. He had night gear, and he was not clergy. Did the sunset thing apply to him? He knew some scripture, but not enough to know what was proper in this situation. The governor did not appreciate moral ambiguity. In fact, he didn't particularly appreciate religion. Why was he doing this? He should go back down, say he found nothing, and tell the church to handle the situation. They just weren' praying hard enough. The governor felt utterly ridiculous. How had he let this happen? How could he have been so incredibly stupid as to allow himself to be put in the position of resolving a church issue when he didn't even believe any of it? He was the LAST person who should be here. No. He had to resolve the matter. For better or worse, whatever this was had to be seen to completion. He would keep climbing if it meant climbing for days. He smiled as he thought of a bumper sticker, "God's House or Bust." He came to a rather terrifying bridge and then some precarious climbs. No candidate had ever ascended with rock-climbing hardware. Church leaders had performed this ritual for thousands of years and he realized that rock climbing must have been part of the church's training. In his twenties, he had done some rock climbing in the permitted portions of the mountains, and good thing, because the trail was getting difficult. He came over a ledge in the midst of talking to himself, and there it was, silencing him at once. It caught him by complete surprise, and he stood gaping and motionless. The governor experienced the dramatic shift from normal thinking to a profound confrontation with a higher order. An enormous rectangular building glowed bright white. Its entrance was tall, but narrow, and a gigantic eagle or hawk-like bird stood before it. The bird's intimidating beak and talons were no doubt responsible for the four shredded carcasses on the ground. Okay. The governor knew when he was out of
his depth. He stood for some time looking at the bodies, looking at the huge
bird staring directly at him, and suddenly his weapons and his gear occurred as
infantile pieces of irrelevance. He dropped everything. The governor had known serious, very serious, but nothing that could touch this kind of serious. He had never been so serious in his life. The existence of the building and the bird proved sufficiently compelling to convert him to one of the faithful. Now a believer, all that he understood, and he understood nothing else, was that he understood absolutely nothing. All he could think to do was pray, to ask whatever had built this house a very simple question, "What do you want me to do?" He kept repeating this over and over, and as he did, the question grew deeper and deeper, "What do you want me to do?" As he continued, the quality of the question expanded from the actions of the next few moments to the nature of the rest of his life, and then expanded to the nature of the rest of his thoughts and feelings as long as he continued to exist. The hunger for the answer to this question consumed more and more of what he was until he became nothing but this hunger and the overwhelming desire to fulfill the will once it was known. The governor started to sob uncontrollably, "You have to tell me, please. I don't know." He fell apart, "Please, I really don't know. I will do anything, but you have to tell me." He forgot all about the bird and sobbed as he had never sobbed - completely confronting his spiritual bankruptcy. Spiritually and psychologically filleted to the core, he lay completely open, choking on his sobs, starving for instructions to do the right thing from a higher source. The gap between his sheer emptiness and the desire for guidance felt like the cross itself. After a time he regained his composure, wiped off his face, and looked up. The bird was gone. He looked around. No bird. This did not make sense. He was not a man of the church. The governor had come here to solve a problem, and it suddenly became apparent that there was no problem. Whatever this was, it was not a problem. This was something else. He did not know what to do. What he did know, what everything inside of him agreed on was that he was not supposed to leave. What else was there? He slowly approached the entrance of the building. The entire building was one huge room. In the center of the room was a small table. On the table was a scepter. The scepter's glow pulsated, making it look alive. The governor did not recall a church leader ever having or making any reference to a staff or the use of a staff. The sacred texts had said nothing of a staff. He felt drawn to it, and then he noticed the birds. Two of them perched at opposite ends of the room. They stood upright against the walls, their wings spread wide and their heads turned to the right. He wanted that staff. He slowly approached
the table, looking at the two birds. He stopped and looked at each bird for some time. The birds did not move. He drew closer and closer to the table until he was standing directly before it. What was he supposed to do? He was not a man of the church. His relationship with his body altered as he reached down and picked up the scepter. As he took hold of it his consciousness expanded in a way that defied language, and suddenly he saw the people in the city, looking up at him, close but not close. He could see their faces as if he were personally with each and every one of them. They seemed to be looking up at him with tear-streaked eyes radiant with worship. He had no idea if they were looking at him
or something behind him or something else, but he was clear beyond all doubt
about one indisputable truth: He was a pawn, an infinitesimal speck of a speck
touched by the will of something infinitely beyond his comprehension. Next Chapter |