“Humanity had built an Ark once, and it worked, but aren’t we just as evil as we once were? It is the tradition of man to tend to the things important only to him and then burn the rest.”
It is said that man is evil. This, we know to be true in many instances. The history of our world and the people who inhabit this pale blue dot is well documented. War, hunger, defeat. It’s all there on pages, in documentaries, in minds that will soon fade, and it will find a place in one's just now born.
The history used to be well known. A Creator and a Rebel. Man’s evil spirit. The decimation and regret. The new life that came in the afterglow. For so long it was all so real, and with mere centuries skepticism and rationalism took its toll on the fantastic and ephemeral.
And sometimes we find ourselves reeling in the absence.
So we tell stories.
Before, there was the Ark then a man on a cross, and finally there was the book that told of the end. All is remembered. It is, and will be, just in smaller and smaller circles that grow more distant from each other day after day.
Once, there was an Ark built by an old man with a long gray beard who convinced two of every animal to meander its way onto his giant boat. Onlookers scoffed and pitied the crazy one and his family, soon to be shuttered up in an old boat with thousands of animals and not a drop of water in sight.
Later there was a man, pure, and hung on a cross by one who did not believe him guilty, appeasing thousands who believed him so. There were prophets and end times and words of encouragement and comfort.
But faith, I guess that’s what it is, is a funny thing to some. Because first the rains came and they bore a ferocity that man had never known and will never know again. Minute by minute, day by day, the waters rose. The cleansing of a world ravaged by something called sin.
And you might say that we live by myths and parables to make sense of a world gone horribly wrong, and you might say that the truth is more fantastic than we could ever understand. So it is.
And after the rain all was made well.
Then after centuries the fear came, and a man was placed upon a cross, bitter wine forced upon his lips, and dignity stripped away and his final call, “why have you forsaken me?” We do these things with prior knowledge. We come to the edge and we stare into the darkness. And it is and was all wrong but it had to be so. So it is, and so it will be until the end of time.
And we left God to die at sunset.
Then the end came. The final chapters spoke in allegory and metaphor, and so the book boiled over into myth, legend, or history. And now, left with some vague notion of truth, we walk home. But, what it really comes down to, when the heart of the matter is dug up and exposed to the open air, is faith. And faith, in this case, was a saving grace and a welcome reprieve.
And the world ended and began again in 40 nights.
Then in three.
It will once more, in an instant.
Then, never again.
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