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The boys awoke today at 5am and I blearily went to the toilet, swung the door open, and caught the top of my foot under the door. I'd swung it with such force that I actually tore a toenail off - the nail of the toe next to the big toe (does it have a name? Are you eating? Stop reading) on the left foot. For the next ten or so minutes I bled a lot – far more indeed than I might have expected. I probably didn't help matters by seizing the nail, which hung on merely by threads of skin at the quick, and tugged at it, trying to pull it off. With blood all over my hands and the bathroom floor, and the nail still attached - although now upright - I began to feel a bit woozy.
I moved to the kitchen to lie down on the slate - but before I could lower myself fully I passed out, smashing my head on the tiles. Then my head started to bleed. Oblivious to it all, the boys sat on the couch, looking at their books. I lay on the ground and collected myself for ten or so minutes. I dressed my wounds, cleaned the bathroom and the small amount of blood off the tiles in the kitchen and put on Day Clothes.
The boys then requested the song "Roundabout" by 70s prog rock band Yes. They're big on Yes at the moment. I retrieved the CD from the car and placed it outside on a table. It was a lovely day and I looked up and admired two magpies frolicking in the fig tree. "It's not so bad, this life," I thought. And then one of the magpies shat on the CD - not the case, the actual CD.
So what lessons have I learned? And what can you draw from my experience?
I'm not going to answer that right now. But I will.
Flemo, this story interests me greatly. In some of the apocryphal versions I've come across references to a certain substance, namely nicotene, being consumed outside the premises at the time the magpie flew past, dispensing divine justice on its way to find a better location from which it judge the present state of humanity. Obviously, you've neglected to mention this because the severe stubbing of your toe, combined with the ultimate consequence of one's daily bread, provided by the Allmighty at His grace and through the orifice of His messenger, has made you realise the importance of the increasingly recognised Commandment 6.5: thou shalt not smoke, or punctuate one's typically boring day with any activity that, for the sake of their long term health and one's short term sanity, normally excludes the presence of children.
ReplyDeleteIt should be noted that the placement of this Commandement within the series is not as arbitrary as it seemed to Boethius, which is perhaps one of the lessons learned to which you allude. If one, and I make no accusations here, uses smoking - which requires one to be outside, unless one wishes to stain one's walls and pollute one's house with the vapours of Satan - is an excuse to wait for the moment in the morning when one's scantily clad neighbour passes the window on the way to the bathroom and, in doing do so, provides one with the opportunity and temptation to covet thy neighbour's ass, then its position before the Seventh Commandment and after the Sixth seems clear: SMOKING KILLS AND DESTROYS RELATIONSHIPS.
But, as the workings of God are not always bleedingly obvious, you probably don't realise the extent to which you were courting disaster (or just having a smoke, AS YOU MAY THINK). While you were outside holding up a shining disk to receive the sacrament, one of your kids was performing an experiment with a screwdriver and a powerpoint - why did you leave the former, such a dangerous object, lying around in the first place? - and the other was, in a spirit of benevolence, attempting to extract a piece of burnt bread, symbolising the cremated body of Christ, from the toaster with a knife. If I had not intervened, by a grace beyond your meagre comprehension, in order for one child to extend charity to another and to prevent another piece of the Host being fed - unnecessarily, due to your negligence - to the agents of God in black and white outfits that would deliver it as a message that overwrites that which is contained on your 'Compact Disk', then SMOKING COULD HAVE DESTROYED YOUR RELATIONSHIPS.
The events of this day should by now have made you realise that your atheism, recently expressed by your hating my Son, who is of GOD, 'unreservedly', could jeopardize your own children: Next time you are outside contravening Commandements 6-7, I may not be so gracious as to prevent that screwdirver from entering that powerpoint.
This contribution leaves nothing out, not even punctuation. Even before exerting the multiple lifetimes of effort that it will take to comprehend this commentary, I have nonetheless RIGHT NOW been brought to a new degree of clarity, renewed fear of the Lord (and cigarettes), and a profound, deep respect for the rhetorical power of capitalisation. I appreciate your insights - and mercy.
ReplyDeleteA need it must be, the forsaken truth for thou my lamb shall hear me. Do not fear, this lord of semantics and his profession of truth and holiness, for "I am" he. Nay do not listen to the lord of no name, 'tis in the third law that the truth be made plain to thee of the duplicity of "He that is false".
ReplyDeleteYour offer of blood upon the altar of stone and your selfless sacrifice to the meek, the children of my realm, which enhances your desire to satisfy your body's needs in the garden of the earth (Eden), shared with the reflective mirror of music divine, gladdens me.
Fear not the threats of my fallen angel as he lures your innocents to an untimely damage. Know that thou are seen well in my beneficence and grace and I shall watch over thy kin as they are my very own.
His placing of evil thoughts as to the desire of your neighbour's mule and perverse intentions therein, lay plain the evil heart which my fallen angel still doth contain. Remember mine messenger on the wings of the black and white, that God truly resides in the east, the land of the Tao, this duality shall save thee my son. Fear not, for I shall always watch over thee... grasshopper.
Moral: sin away my boy, don't listen to the ramblings of the unnamed.