Gathering became, the more powerful the Eye.
At some point the need arose for some kind of leadership. This was the origin of the Callers, may the Eye protect them. Some of their duties and powers you would find familiar: organizing and conducting worship, counseling and teaching, etc. Other functions and roles you would not. Reader, you must remember that we are all one under the Eye now. And those pure and gifted enough to approach closer to the sacred center of that aleph are duly recognized as the holy elect among us.
Then some of the dragons began to grow. It was barely noticeable at first, but after about a year there could be no doubt: the dragons at the center of the larger Gatherings had become substantially bigger than their fellows in the smaller towns. We could only take this as a sign. All our sacrifices had not been in vain! We had been right all along. Although they were still pretending to ignore us, our beautiful companions knew we were in their Presence, honoring them, and had decided to respond to us. It made sense: they wanted to be equally visible to everyone. So those individuals around whom larger congregations had formed needed to grow. Such a simple, elegant solution! And so our precious dragons went from strength to strength in their long, subtle campaign to conquer the human heart.
They had done this for us; how could we reciprocate? One wet and miserable fall day, as we gazed up at our dragon’s blinking, drowsy figure, it came to us in a flash: we could build a shelter for it! We would build an enormous roofed structure, expansive enough to hold our dragon and the entire Gathering. But we couldn’t very well construct something so massive around our dragon: it might scare it off. There was nothing for it—we would build it close by and hope our dragon could be enticed somehow into entering its new home.
We quickly assembled those among us who had architectural and design experience. As they debated the thousand and one possible shapes the structure could take, we began to realize that what was called for was no mere shelter from the weather. We had to build a temple. Every Gathering in the world would have to build a gorgeous temple for their dragon.
And so we did. Around the time we embarked on this great project, the Eye shifted yet again. We suddenly found we were no longer alone in there: our Brethren, all of them, were present as well. You, with your faith invested in cold circuits, colder capital, or a deity you cannot see, would probably call it mind-reading or magic.
We call it Togetherness in the Presence, and it was the final key to the door that released humanity from a dark, solitary existence into a luminous world of peace and communion. Blessed be the Eye!
Togetherness made it possible for Gatherings worldwide to agree on the exact form of the temple. With allowances for variations in dimension and local materials, the same, classically severe temple today proudly stands in every park and open area around the globe.
The last element built was the column for the dragon. Carefully constructed to be precisely 5 meters in height, to bring the dragon as close as possible to us, ours was gilded and shone in the sun on the day we had decided to invite our dragon inside. It had been determined that we would encircle it as usual and then slowly withdraw into the temple, chanting as we went. A special song had been written for the event:
Blessed are those who come to them
Be our glory and our shield!
Heaven awaits those who bow to them
You’re our glory and our shield!
Eternal joy for those who serve them
Praise to our glory and our shield!
The tension in the air was palpable. What if our dragon wouldn’t come? After all, despite the unarguable reality of the Eye, and the fact that some of them had grown larger, we had no evidence they truly cared what we thought or did. Having spent a long, sleepless night, many of us were pale and trembling as we marched into the enormous temple. The Caller took her rightful place at the base of the column. A deep hush fell over our congregation. From the inside, despite the lofty opened portals, we couldn’t see our dragon. We could only wait, hearts pounding.
And then a sigh passed through our ranks, which swiftly became a roar of exultation: it had come! It had actually come! With strong, steady wingstrokes our dragon flew overhead and landed lightly on its pedestal. It had come home.
Dear reader, I am not embarrassed to tell you that even now recollecting that fateful moment causes me to lose my composure. You see, our magnificent dragon was not done giving. As we stared at its splendid figure in awe, it suddenly lifted its head, opened its pale eyes wide, and spread its wings to their fullest extent. And as it opened its mouth to give a piercing cry, a tongue of pure fire issued forth.
We live in the warmth of that fire even now.
Afterword
Well, you have made it this far, I must have done something right. Since you have been good enough to grant me so much of your time, let me take a few minutes more.
About the story itself, it might add to your enjoyment (or confirm you in your dissatisfaction) to know a bit about the genesis and development of the piece. About a year and a half ago, I saw a large crow perched outside my window. Except, for a second it didn’t look like a crow, it looked… well, like a dragon. Don’t ask me why; I swear I was as sober as a church mouse. And everything flowed from that one brief moment of delightful visual discombobulation.
The piece grew far beyond my original conception of it as a quirky, Twilight Zone sort of “What if..” tale about strange creatures suddenly appearing in our midst. Unless your politics aligns with mine, you will probably feel this is an unfortunate development. And I must confess that in my mind’s eye I sometimes catch tantalizing glimpses of that pure, lean, Ur-Dragon, as it soars through the buoyant air of a greater talent, unencumbered by leftist screeds, homegrown socioeconomic critiques and bromides, and Mr. Smarty-Pants classical allusions. Oh, my once and never dragon, did your master clip your wings?
So the magical creature was given a prickly undergarment of socialist diagnosis, and then, by way of cure, a rather oversized utopian overcoat. And this entire matryoshkan amalgamation was constructed fitfully over the course of a long year, like a building project that keeps losing its financial backers. I fear the seams show. I would like to think it is a triptych: a work composed of three parts, all of which are interrelated and necessary for the piece to work. But in my darker moments I have suspected it is more like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, kept flying, barely, by ingenuity and a father’s love. Or even worse, that the whole project is just…silly. Well, if it is, it is.
But I stand on firmer ground when it comes to the importance of integrating topical social, economic, and political issues into works of general fiction. Here is George Orwell, who accomplished precisely that, and better than anyone:
“And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.”
So, my bird is heavy but at least it’s trying to fly in a definite direction.
Beyond problems of structure and general writing skill, I have other concerns. One is that I feel I was not fair either to teachers or journalists. It proved impossible to rework the story so that they could emerge as more than negative stereotypes. In both cases they were swept up in the tide of anti-establishment invective I myself created. I apologize to both groups of professionals.
It will be clear to the reader that I don’t think much of our current political and economic system. I understand that capitalism has brought more people out of poverty in a shorter time period than any other socioeconomic force could conceivably have done. And I acknowledge that representative government, democracy, offers the best chance for societies to thrive and progress, now and in the future. The problems lie not in the conception, but in the execution. To put it bluntly, the world has been hijacked. Our grand and most painfully-won large-scale civilizational achievements—democracy and free enterprise—at present do not belong to us any
more than the land a medieval serf toiled on belonged to him. Who is holding the deed to the soil? I think I make it quite clear in the story who is.
Don’t take it from me, listen to a certified member of the 1%, Nick Hanauer, super-entrepreneur and investor, who has a great piece in Politico Magazine entitled “The Pitchforks are Coming…for Us Plutocrats”. He puts it better than I ever could: “Capitalism, when well managed, is the greatest social technology ever invented to create prosperity. But capitalism left unchecked tends toward concentration and collapse.”
So I stand by my diagnosis of the problem, even if my vision for how things might be improved seems far-fetched or pie-in-the-sky.
But I will confess to some uneasiness about the religious elements of the piece. The last thing I would want to do is offend people of faith by producing yet another thoughtless, contemptuous, secular screed casting scorn upon any and all parts of human culture having the slightest element of religiosity. This way of thinking is not merely impolitic and short-sighted; it is itself an irrational, kneejerk response to the admittedly vexing problem (and it is a problem, not an ‘issue’ or a ‘challenge’) we all face of how to mend the deep fracture that currently exists in humanity between those who believe in God