their hearts...and Ignorance would not be punished; just as no parent would strike an infant for sins and wrong doings more appropriately condemning to an adult.
Those who knew, however, and did reject him, he did rebuke. Not for his own sake or for His father’s sake but for the Many. For these Few were as snake coils of blindness seeking any eyes of the many who might wish to venture into...what...daylight?...humanity? Why is the pursuit of enlightenment so cursed he wondered. And the more cursed, not by those who don’t know it, but those who would prevent it?
Seemingly, his Father loved everyone but did not like the Few.
He would have liked the Short man; he would have loved the Tall man. The Tall man would never have looked into his eyes; the Short man would have invited him for a meal and a long discussion into the night.
Why did he, the Beggar’s son, lie here in the dirt then?
The beggar boy did not feel sorry for himself lying in the dirt all night. He had slept in worse, in mud, in dung, in far more danger than this. he had never really liked walls.
Other men liked walls because they held ‘things’ out, but he always felt to be uneasy around what the walls held in.
It was not so much the men they held in as what was held in the men. He preferred freedom and paid its costs but he had learned early from the disciples that one thing a caged man hates most is a free man.
This is where men differ much from their brethren, the animals. Even a dog. A chained dog will bark furiously at a free dog but if unchained will then run with that dog.
And no free dog will pick up that chain and place it on their own neck.
No, a man does not lose his way away from men but amongst them. For to ‘survive’ all ‘man’ must become a group. Like a flock of birds, some are ahead, some are behind but all are at the same height. Perhaps that is the Lie that is religion. Surely though spirit, spirituality is not.
Religion. The great devourer. As if the puppet masters become caught in their own strings. To make the One dance for their own ends, they all become dancers and cannot separate from the tyranny of the means. This was his Father now.
No son, no child wanted their father simply given to the mob. Or His ideals.
For it seemed to the beggar’s young son that one mob, the people, the religious leaders had taken his body, his life and another mob, the disciples had taken his father’s ideals, his very meaning.
There was great widespread talk of his resurrection of body later but before even that short time, the beggar’s young son had been cursed and laughed away from the gathering.
Now he could see from the Short man’s discussion what the disciples had done, had begun almost at the moment his Father drew a last breathe and forgave all.
They had changed the living testament of his Father’s work to an Anti-death testament of his Father’s crucifixtion and resurrection. It was not how he LIVED but how he did not DIE which became their religion.
To be sold to the people. Like all the other religions. The Law of Contrasts.
What is seen to have happened has not happened. Thus, to the Beggar’s son’s view entered the Tricksters, the Masqueraders, the Merchants of Immortality.
He knew he was bitter. Bitter of this.
At first, young, alone, grieving so much alone, he had been bitter at their rejection, their callous indifference to a son who had truly lost a Father. In his eyes, they had only lost a friend, a teacher. He did not see that, for most, they had lost their chance.
Now he knew that some were not like that but their nature would be used by the others to disguise a climb to power, to recognition. Religions are not borne out of gods but out of men...that maxim from the Short man he knew to be quite true, regardless of wether gods existed or not.
Could he undo any of this? Why would he? Go preach against those who used his Father’s meanings, his ideals, his miracles, his very body for purposes of a political resurrection?
Talk. Talk against talk. Like the Short man had said... ‘the more men point into the shadows, the more they believe what doesn’t exist’...
His Father had existed. The Beggar’s young son was not so sure with the disciples that He still did. Wether one applauds or boos the players at a bad stage, one draws a crowd to them. He would leave them and their masks alone.
The boy remembered in the Short man’s talk that there was some hope, some love yet in humanity. We are not just animals becoming insects.
Often, his Father had used birds, not animals, in his parables of man and men. Perhaps it was because, though much attached to the flock, birds could still soar. Just as a man in the City of men can still soar in his soul. Bird and man. Flock and men. Equal because of flight. Fragile on the earth.
His Father had taught him that men did not exist in the eyes of a god. Only Man. That his Father’s God did not see the collective...He only saw Man as One...each One. An individual being. A soul already.
Wether that eluded to, or brought on immortality, the beggar’s son did not know. He did know it brought meaning.
Meaning to each man. It was not a trick but the more a man sees god inside himself the more he sees of himself...as a man...as a good man.
His Father had explained that all good lies within...is present inside man as a likeness of god is inside man. It is not god...it is His likeness. Virtue is not a god...but it is a kind of Soul.
As the Beggar’s young son drifted of to sleep he was thinking it was a paradox...the more complete a man feels himself to be, the less he feels the need for soul...a godless man may therefore be a more complete man...yet remains in the full image of a god
Still the smaller the soul, the smaller the god, yet, the larger the man...at least the abstract realizations of a god decline ....the road he travels becomes less spiritual, more realist.....but this holds true only if one assumes the source of soul is the Dread of the Short man...
What if the source of Soul is some other thing...some other word than god or immortality?
...a man trades his dreaded soul for his other soul. that is to say..he will have one or the other...but never needing both...
Each man must find his own soul...souls cannot be bartered between men...only between the gods which own the souls..and the men who own each god....
When he did awaken, the Beggar’s young son instantly knew what he would attempt to do. He would attempt to teach a little of his Father’s work to the crowds at the Marketplace of Gods. In teaching, he also would learn. He did not believe that spirituality was simply running from death as religion seemed to be. Inside, there is more to a Man than fear.
On the way to the Marketplace he purchased some objects which he would use in his discussion, had them wrapped individually to sell at a minimum price to replace the wares of the ‘God-hawkers’.
When he got to the Marketplace of the Gods, it was already beginning to be its bedlam of abuse, worship and commerce.
The Beggar wove his way gently around the outskirts of the milling crowd till he found an area less crowded. Here he set up his wares. It was close enough to draw some ears away from the main ‘din’ but still quiet enough for the Beggar’s son not to have to catapult his words above the ‘forth and foam’ of the other Merchants.
Even before he began to speak some of the crowd, wether because of exhaustion at the merchants’ abuse or curiosity of something new or awaiting their turn into the ‘Swirl of Selection’, turned to hear his forms of abuse against the milling worshipers.
He spoke, however, far more gently than any they had ever heard before.
“They say there is a journey towards god which walks away from man. I ask you, my friends, which way does a man lean in this journey? Forward to add weight to the god...or backward linger longer as a man?
For few men know their god; few men know themselves.
But by the Law, the lesser a man is, the greater will be his god. These are only passing words, an eulogy of something less...and we cannot be held to clap or cry for the death of l
ittle men...or indeed smaller and smaller men.”
The puzzled look on some of the crowd turning to anger told the beggar that they had naturally assumed he had insulted them as that was the way of the Marketplace.
“Friends! No! No! I mean not thou. Thou art great men, better men but now are juggling for a place of Sin. That is the last place where a man will look for himself. In Sin, he looks for god, he looks for forgiveness.
If the crowd is Sin, is there any Man within? No. There is only god.”
Now a merchant (a great mouth and beard upon very small legs) closest to the Beggar’s spot had been drawn to this talk, anticipating the usual cascade of condemnation upon his own ‘buyers’ near his stall. The beggar was obviously a newcomer and ,worse, speaking out of form and custom and so the Merchant bellowed an interruption “ You of Rags there! You cannot speak of gods and sins and laws! That is the great domain and license of myself and these fellow Merchants. No one can just enter this place of holy barter and, like a bad fruit stand, auction off flies for figs.”
To this the Beggar replied “The Law of Contrasts is only that; in this Marketplace, all that is required for barter, for buy and sell, for cat and mouse, for beg and commerce, for gods and men is... difference...only difference.
I, if I may daresay, thus belong here, my friend, for I differ as much from you as any other voice spoken by man. Thou art proud, I am humble. Thou art artful, I am but simple. Thou art beguiling to the Great , I