#there is a hunger for the divine that cannot ever be fully sated.

[lamortwrites]

What the fuck use is a god anyway? Humanity creates our own holiness. Did we get permission to make music? Did we ask before reaching our great grubby hands into the sky? Did we stop to check it was allowed before attempting to sate our unending hunger?

[scarletgardensrpg]

UNDEAD ♦ TWENTY-FIVE ♦ THE ASCENDANCY

PETER SÉJOUR is an Undead member of the Ascendancy, best known as the "Doctor"—a euphemistic title used to describe his role as the Ascendancy's rotbeest exterminator. Originally a Yellow Jacket spy tasked with infiltrating the Moulin Rouge to tail Kisara, Peter, after reuniting with his brother Dimitri, chose to renege to the Ascendancy two years ago. Resurrected by Neeve in Côte d'Ivoire, Peter exhibits the classic characteristics of all her creations: startling grace and beauty, the uncanny ability to pass off as a living person, and a resistance to the destructive side effects of PM-GRNT. As a result, Peter is entrusted by Nikolaas to not only regulate drug use among Undead members, but to additionally "take care of" those who have descended into madness and reverted back into rotbeesten.

BIOGRAPHY

Cecile had curled her mouth at the sight of him: pale with infection, shivering in the dark earth, all loveliness vanished in the wake of rot and filth. At her side, stood the slender, fox-faced Blue, who, almost pityingly, turned away—as if to spare him the humiliation of being observed in such a state. At last, Cecile turned away, too, tugging sharply at the cord of rope, coiled around her delicate wrist at one end and collared around Dimitri’s neck at the other. Peter would remember this moment forever: he carried it with him into death, into madness-tinged revival, into resurrection under Neeve’s steady hand. The rain. The cold. The hurt. And those words, spoken from Cecile's mouth like an iron brand upon his chest: Come, Dimitri. Laissez-le.

- ❀ -

Abidjan was a city of extremes: the cerulean port of Côte d'Ivoire, one half a pristine metropolis of commercial avenues and gleaming skyscrapers; the other half a dogged slum, steeped in sour fumes and dead grass. He would be born into the latter half, one forgotten child among countless others, and he would know only this for years and years: grime and squalor, bottomless hunger, violet-dark nights of restless fear. To live was to survive, and to survive was to kill that which made you soft. And he was soft. Or, at least, he looked it: an Adonis of unrivaled, striking beauty, soft-lipped and jewel-eyed, who never quite filled out like the other boys—but instead, remained limber and lean throughout his youth. Had his circumstances been different, Peter would have enjoyed the attention. In Abidjan, it marked him out and made him look weak. How to show that he wasn’t? He would split his knuckles on a dozen noses to prove it, use his teeth and nails like any feral urchin, and come out of every fight hoping the bruises on his face would leave permanent scars. Eventually, he found his other half. The younger boy, already so saturated with bitter arrogance, so unrestrained and self-impressed, had made his first words to Peter a taunt—Es-tu une fille?—and they’d tussled over bread, or a necklace, or something else inconsequential—until the punches began to glance, and they began to laugh. These were the better years: when there had been someone to share the vicious days and violent nights with, someone to bleed with. Dimitri's harsh beauty rivaled his own—but where Peter had stripped his away in hateful resentment for the way it made him into a target, Dimitri twisted his own into a weapon of violence. He could make any ruinous act of barbery look sublime. He could dress in only hunger and lack, yet make those things look like regal ornaments upon an emperor's robe. It disturbed Peter, and it intrigued him. 

Peter et Dimitri, Dimitri et Peter. They would wind through ashen streets, hand in unlovable hand, just as two famished cubs of the savannah might prowl together, hunting joyously for something to sink their teeth into. Dimitri made survival into a sport; something to indulge and luxuriate in, reckless in his conviction that each day they were alive was cause for the grandest of celebrations—and the gravest of risks. Peter, who built armored layer after armored layer over himself, and long ago was made frigid and austere by the treacheries of the city—he had never been able to rejoice in the chaos, as Dimitri so often did. You will get us both killed, Peter snarled. But it was hard to be angry with Dimitri, who only ever smirked, cheshirely and dark: Perhaps, but I am getting us to live first. In the end, they were both right. The days were sated and tranquil; the nights wild and remarkable. But at the end of the world, his brother had been the one to get them into trouble with the rotbeest—and in provoking such a terrible creature, sealed them both to the fate of death. You could not brawl with beasts the way you brawled with people. In the gladiator arena of nature, humans would lose, everytime. Dimitri died first, caught in its jaws, made mad by its bite, himself transformed into hell incarnate—and then Peter, who, at the very end, could not bring himself after all to kill the one thing which brought happiness to his life, not even the worser shadow of him. It was almost laughable—Peter, so heartless, so merciless, so graceless—bore all three yet. Blue did not want him for this very reason, looking hungrily instead to Dimitri, imploring Cecile to save him, and leave Peter to die. And died he did.  

So it would be Neeve who found him instead: a curse of separation, a blessing of resurrection nonetheless. She was the sun-skinned Queen of Eden, whose gaze never once left Peter’s while Kazimir cleaned blood and soil off of his damaged body, and who returned to him his resplendent beauty one hundred fold, feeding him the ambrosia of her own flesh and blood. It makes you powerful, she’d say afterwards, tracing a finger along the fine arch of his brow, the straight slope of his nose—along every rivulet of his face, which had afforded him bitter troubles from birth to death. Neeve was gentler than others, but for the first time, Peter thought a glint of something hungry and divine shined in her eyes, watching her watch him. Mourn not for your fearsome brother. I have made you in my image. That is a tremendous gift. He had not believed her, nor fully understood what she meant. But then—when the Undead began to tremble before him, when he learned to wield his grace like a knife to the throat—yes, he understood her, then. Neeve had put him excruciatingly close to the living—a proximity which granted him a rare peace, an ethereal loveliness, and a coveted clarity of mind. He could remember every detail of his past: memories he would have once discarded in disgust, but now held onto like a drowning man. Dimitri, Dimitri, Dimitri. I’ll be screaming through the afterlife. I’ll be hunting for you, buried under flowers. The House would rear him into a weapon: a guileful liar and spy, cold of perfect gaze and void of heart. It was who he was supposed to be, anyway—but where the other Undead soldiers were weaned on dosage after dosage of PM-GRNT 197, which persuaded them into a numb, sightless loyalty—Peter remained largely unafflicted. Another gift, though one he suspected Neeve had not intentionally meant to give him. Nevertheless: it was this gift which had allowed him to find Dimitri at last—and before he could change his mind, follow him.

CONNECTIONS

DIMITRI – THE RUINS. Prenez quelques conseils. Nobody likes a know-it-all, Peter used to advise, and it was not advice at all—rather, a pricky, sullen complain. Dimitri, damn him, would only ever flash that sunny smile, indulgent and endlessly pleased with himself. Mais—you do. And what could Peter say to that? Only that it was true, and he did not like Dimitri, but rather loved him: fiercely and without pretension, just as all brothers ought to. They were not blood, but in those days, there had been plenty of it around to seal their bond anyways: mouthfuls of it for each time they were caught and beaten; stained bandages and stinging, scraped knees for each time they weren’t. Life was hard in Abidjan, but Peter could always stomach it. Dimitri had made it stomachable. It was foolish of Peter to have thought they would both come away from death unscathed—and though Peter was indeed remade gently in Neeve’s radiant image, the same cannot be said for his brother, who, in being raised on Cecile’s manic ire, bears those very same traits, injurious and hateful. Peter, who came down from the heights of Heaven to sit in Hell with Dimitri instead, will not be so quick to give up. Dimitri, cleaved cleanly from his side by the detestable hound-girl, Blue, looks unseeingly upon Peter now and sees nothing worth his attention. As if I don’t know the shape of your soul, brother. As if you don’t know mine. He may treat Peter as coldly as he’d like—but Peter is sure the memories will return. 

ZELDA – THE ANGEL. The gardener Zelda, who is gentle and ungentle in peculiar turns, produces the very poisons which, though unappealing to him, have seduced a pack of beasts into exhibiting incredible, almost frightening, reverence for her. If the seeds she doles out are the Undead’s religion, she herself is a Priestess of the Underworld. Indeed, they stand on opposite sides of the Ascendancy—she is beloved and protected; he is loathed and feared. And yet, in unexpected ways, he shares a striking kinship with her, and finds solace of a different kind in her orchard of blood and fruit. Perhaps it has to do with the way they both answer to turncoat, to traitor, to apostate—and perhaps it has to do with the graceful contours of their face and bodies, their rosy complexion, the manner with which they move through the world—that is, with thoughtless ease, as if they were made of water and wind. In the eyes of the Ascendancy, Zelda thrums with coveted, unobtainable life—and Peter, of all the Undead, sits closest to the realm of the living.

NEEVE & OKSANA – THE DEATH-GODDESS, THE WINTER-CAT. It is because of Neeve that Peter stands so starkly apart from nearly all other Undead: for those belonging to Julian are beholden to his every word like heartless soldiers, and those who answer to Cecile find themselves burdened with bloodlust. In some ways, this makes him extraordinarily lucky—and in other ways, this closeness to something he’ll never again be wounds him beyond words. Just as Sasha is Julian’s greatest joy and fiercest pride, so too had he and Oksana once been the lovely Neeve’s: her most perfect creations, molded so closely in the image of the living that they could almost taste it. Peter does not regret turning his back on the House, but he cannot deny that he misses the two of them. Neeve is, naturally, heartbroken that he has left—but whereas her grief is simple, Oksana’s is far more complex. He and Oksana are no saints, of course, and have never claimed to be—but there was a promise made at some point that they, for all their trainings in deception and con, would never lie to one another. Peter, then, in plunging a knife in her back has done something unforgivable. In the wake of his betrayal, Oksana has since descended beyond some high precipice of gracelessness, having now grown into a feral, wounded creature. He had not planned on ever crossing paths with her again, but Neeve has sent Oksana to not only finish what he failed to two years ago on his mission, but to collect him, as well.

OPEN ♦ FC: DUDLEY O'SHAUGHNESSY

[dvbermingham]

Chapter 5: Toro

This time, we were led down a different set of stairs, no aquarium set in the walls. It was as though the hall and stairs had been swapped out. Though I didn’t feel submerged, I still felt a slight concern that I somehow stumbled into the Eschquarium itself.

We reached a door at the bottom of the stairwell leading to Senju’s office. It was stiflingly hot, like the inside of a microwavable pizza snack. Senju offered Matsuzaka a seat across from his desk.  On Senju’s lap rested a sea turtle, which he stroked lovingly, caressing it’s flippers, tapping its shell to inspect its integrity.

Behind Senju were two men, both seated, both calm as soup. One wrote in a little hand-held journal. I took a position at the back against the wall. Senju’s men didn’t seem to notice anything in the room had changed from before we entered.

“We haven’t had a chance to chat, Mr. Matsuzaka. I’m very happy you’ve chosen to accept the position. I like to refer to it as daiymo, an older term, perhaps, but still relevant. As you well know, the world of sushi, is ultimately a feudal one. Strict hierarchies, fealty to the lords who reign up on high. Those who exist in the restaurant industry tend to thrive in such relationships.” Senju eyed his new subordinate, stroking his turtle all the while. “A fascinating creature, is it not? Don’t worry, it won’t drown. It can live up to seven hours outside the water. Can you live both inside and outside of water, Mr. Matsuzaka?”

“No sir, unfortunately not.”

“If I were to throw you in the ocean and ask you to hold your breath, would you do it?”

“Yes sir.”

“How long would it take you to drown?”

“About one minute sir. Maybe two.”

“That’s what I thought. It takes an amphibious creature to run a sushi empire. You cannot be able to swim with the fish, then come back to land without forgetting how to breathe the air. You must live underwater and above water.”

“Yes sir.”

“For instance, if your eyes were as astute as mine, if your gills were at all part of your body, if you were an amphibian, you might go for a swim out from the shores of Battery park, swim for a mile or so along in the southeastern direction and see through the muck and the spillage and the dead things and the poo and notice about two dozen bodies suspended from the floor of the harbor, their feet tied to large stones or cement.  You would still have the stamina to inspect closely, see any scars around their necks, any stab wounds in the abdomens, all the tiny mutilations I’m so fond of. And most of all, you would not be afraid, because amphibians don’t have fear. Why don’t amphibians have fear?”

“Um, because, sir, they are animals.”

“Animals can’t fear?”

“No?”

“Are we not animals?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Matsuzaka…I do not like contradictions. Which is it?”

“Which is what?” squeaked Matsuzaka.

“Amphibians don’t have fear because they’re fucking ancient! Ancient things don’t think we way we do. They only care about two things: eating and fucking. What a life!

“Ah.”

“Look at George. Look at his face. Look how calm he is, even in this strange place”

The turtle flailed.

“Don’t you feel a kinship with him? I’m certain we are related. Far far back, in the days of the mudskipper. When we were amphibious! Can you imagine? Maybe someday people will revert back to their amphibian brains. Then we would truly get something accomplished here, eh!?” “I look forward to serving you, sir.”

“Enough bullshit. I am here to talk about Ersatz. The fat fuck de facto leader of the Partition. Have you ever spoken with him?

“No sir.”

“Have you ever met him?”

“No sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Almost, sir.”

“Ersatz is the most dangerous man in New York City. He is responsible for countless terrorist attacks on our restaurants, and quite likely even his own, of course only through his blaming the attacks on the guild  does he drum up resentment against the Guild. He is often seen dining at the restaurants the night before they’re destroyed. A hideous display of arrogance, if you ask me…nothing more than a fetish. Though he’s quite fat, he squeezes into spaces like a thin man. Rarely does the chef recognize him. That’s how he could so ostentatiously flay Takuto.”

“So…you need him killed?”

“Ha! Please,” Senju rose from his seat, taking his turtle with him, stroking atop the head. “I’ve been trying that for years. Besides, that’s a little advanced for a man so new to the position. I’m just explaining that this man is your enemy. That he is out to destroy that which you have sworn to protect. No, your job is to maintain our network of chefs and their Neo-feudal fealty to the Guild and hence the Imperial Sushi Council. Your job is to provide them with the most highly regarded tuna money and power can buy. You!” Senju had suddenly directed his eyes towards me. “Where is your tuna?”

“Right over there, sir.”

“Don’t leave it there. Pick it up!”

“Sorry sir.”

“What’s your name?”

“Lou Mastiff sir.”

“Lou Mastiff. Strong name for a strong fellow. You come from a long line of strong men?”

“I don’t recall sir.”

“Well was your father strong?”

“Yes sir.”

“Were your uncles strong?”

“Yes sir.”

“Was your grandfather strong?”

“He got polio in his twenties, but before that I think he was.”

Senju grimaced. “Polio, eh?”

“I think so sir.”

“Good. Now guard that tuna. And don’t let it drip on you. It’s making a mess.” Senju went to the corner and placed the turtle in a clear plastic box that extended out from the wall. He closed the door and pressed a button, and the turtle was vacuum-sucked into the depths of the building, back to its makeshift habitat.

“I don’t mean to redirect the conversation without your consent, Boss Senju, but if you would allow me to speak freely, I would like to express some concerns.”

The boss sighed, and returned to his desk. “You may.”

“I am a chef. I work well with others who have been in the restaurant business, who have worked in kitchens, who understand what is expected of them. I have experience with violence, as any chef, but I am unfamiliar with politics. I don’t know much about the guild, other than what Takuto had taught me, but he didn’t have much time to teach."

“What is your point?

“My point is I’m worried I’m being set up to fail.”

“Set up to fail? As in…I want you to fail? That it is my intention for you to fail?”

“I just mean, perhaps you are desperate for someone to fill the vacancy, and I am your last resort. And as such, I’m destined to fail.”

“You’re destined for something…” he murmured. Then, after taking some time to think, he spoke:

“Do you know why I hire Sushi chefs as my regional bosses?”

Matsuzaka shook his head.

“Because to be a great sushi chef, you must appreciate the details, however small, of every individual action. You must see, more precisely than anyone else, the ways in which our actions weave a tapestry of experience that extend beyond the immediate. The faintest expression of citrus, the finest brushstroke of shoyu, the complement of temperatures between rice and fish — a sushi chef aspires to create food as perfection. The wild tuna alive at sea is a being of supreme lineage, a creature out of time and space, at once consuming and consumed by the primordial ocean, found now on display for your customer, form from the formless. And let us not ignore the symbolism of the rice, the chais-lounge for the ocean divine, resting in seductive curvature before it’s final journey. Then, as surely as the cycle of birth and death, the sushi is devoured, gone, the height of experience suddenly and forever in the past. The sushi chef knows his work is never complete. What he creates is swiftly destroyed, and so on and so on. He will never reach the end because man’s hunger is never sated. The hunger returns again and again, day after day, and the chef abides. The chef is the conduit between desire and offerings, between the ocean and the land. The chef is the Amphibious.

“I fully understand, Boss Senju.”

“There is simultaneous simplicity and complexity in everything we do, depending on how you chose to perceive it, how well your eye is trained to pick up on the details. A murderous villain is every bit as complicated or as simple as a perfectly executed nigiri.”

“Clarity is could not be greater.”

“We are all asked to do things we haven’t done before, or we have no interest in doing.  We do these things because of this little thing called destiny. Your decisions up until this point in you life, like it or not, have landed you in my office at this very moment, precisely at the time when I need someone like you to set their mind to a task and execute. You do believe in destiny, don’t you Mr. Matsuzaka?”

“Once in a while.”

“Good enough.”

“Well, in that case, if perhaps I could get a small overview of what the situation is, so I can do a better job of figuring out the best way to handle it?”

“What, like an oral history of this guild and the Imperial Sushi Council and all the rest?”

“I guess that would be helpful. Sure.”

“Well, I don’t know if I have time for that. There are quite a few turtles swimming around inside the walls of this place that need my attention. They find areas that aren’t especially clean and often difficult to escape. I do however have some historians and biographers on the payroll. I’m sure they can help you out. Steve!”

One of Senju’s men jolted awake. ”Yes boss.”

“Get Mr. Matsuzaka something to read about our Guild, would you? An overview of some kind? Anything?”

[thespearnews-blog]

SABATH@SPEAR: Forgiveness Is Not an ‘Optional’ Part of Our Life in Christ

New Post has been published on http://thespearnews.com/2017/03/25/sabathspear-forgiveness-not-optional-part-life-christ/

SABATH@SPEAR: Forgiveness Is Not an ‘Optional’ Part of Our Life in Christ

Rose Babirye;

Having arrived at this ‘door’ of repentance, Christ invites, beseeches us, to enter for our soul’s sake so we may make a new beginning, one marked by a renewed, great effort to focus more on Christ, unencumbered by the constant giving in to the passions. Through our worship, our prayer, our fasting and alms, we learn to struggle and engage a spiritual battle to orientate ourselves more to Christ and His Kingdom more than ever before, building up for ourselves treasure in heaven. We do this knowing that salvation is at hand, that this “tithe of the year” is meant for our advancement in the Kingdom of God, as we hear today: “Our salvation is nearer at hand than when we first believed” (Rom.13:11).

We neglect such an opportunity at our own peril. Complacency, being satisfied with our current spiritual state is a great enemy to our healing and salvation. In order to do battle and advance, we throw off all those worldly distractions, entertainment, feasting, and instead, strive to fill our time, our thoughts and hearts with Christ, we learn to be sated by Christ. We make use of the divine services which He gives us through His Church so we can allow the truth that Christ is to ‘wash’ over us again and again, till it has, by God’s grace begun a change in us.

Christ teaches us this day that all our ‘actions’: fasting, abstinence, worship, prayer, increased offerings, alms giving, are meaningless if not also accompanied with a sincere desire for an interior change: to learn to love more as He loves us, to forgive as He has first forgiven us. And so, we discover this truth: the fasting, praying, worshiping, and alms-giving are internalized if they’re to have their full and deifying effect, furthering us in our growth and healing in Christ.

This is the purpose of this great ‘spiritual hospital’ we call Lent: We cross the doorstep into Lent with a desire for healing, to seek freedom from bitterness, envy, anger, pride, lust—all the sins and passions that cause us spiritual sickness, and death—death because they separate us from our life-source, Jesus Christ, death because we cannot hold onto them and come into Christ’s near presence and communion (koinonia). Into our brokenness—the brokenness of ourselves and our relationships, Christ calls on us to interject this act of grace: loving, forgiving one another. But how? It’s so difficult, it’s beyond us! Yes! So, we learn to trust God for the faith to believe a new way is not only possible but inevitable as we cooperate with the Holy Spirit this Lent.

Now there’s no getting around it: if taken seriously, Lent is hard work, a great struggle, and it can be daunting. But that’s just it: There’s no ‘comfortable’ or ‘armchair’ road that leads us into the Kingdom of Heaven. So, Lent, being a spiritual hospital, cannot be ‘comfortable.’ ‘No pain, no gain’ could also perhaps be an apt slogan for our Lenten struggles too. Anyone who’s been to a physical therapist knows that without some pain, stretching muscles and joints, there’s no chance for healing. So it is also for our souls: We are spiritually and physically stretched (God created us with both physical and spiritual attributes) in order to make progress in His divine life.

Being open to Christ’s healing means we follow the prescription He gives us through His Church as close as we can. We don’t go to a doctor, receive the diagnosis and prescription, but then say, “Oh, I’ll just take half of the prescription, thank you!” Or, “I know this has been proven effective, but I’ll just make up my own.” We fast, as close to the ‘prescription’ of the Church as possible, always with a blessing, because accountability is also part of the healing from our pride and disobedience. We pray the Prayer of St. Ephraim with prostrations and metanias twice a day, as able. We carve out time from our work and family life to attend the Wednesday Presanctified Liturgies and the services of Holy Week, we make full use of sacramental Confession, so that we can hunger and thirst more after Christ and His Kingdom.

In order for this return, this victory to happen, in order for us to be able to participate more fully and faithfully in Great Lent, we begin Lent with an interior cleansing of the soul, forgiving one another and asking forgiveness from one another for all the ways that you and I, through our sinfulness, ‘pollute’ the world and our relationships which God has made good.

Those of us who’ve grown up in a culture with Christian roots often take forgiveness for granted. But being forgiven, asking forgiveness, is certainly not universally known in the world or in other religions, certainly not in Islam or even in our own culture today. In Judaism, the practice was, “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Asking forgiveness and forgiving is truly of the Kingdom of God, the fullness of the life in Christ.

For this reason, forgiveness is often a struggle; it is, in its sincerity, reflective of that return to Paradise from which our sins have exiled us, and which is the ultimate purpose of our Lenten journey–to return. To forgive involves both love and humility; where pride reigns, forgiveness and love cannot take root. This is a hard but necessary truth for us to hear.

Against the background of this teaching, Jesus speaks to us in today’s Gospel, reminding us: “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

As with everything Christ teaches us, there’s nothing arbitrary here. When we ask forgiveness, we’re recognizing that we’re sinners too, that my sins, my fallenness, affects others; our sins dim the light of Christ in us meant to illumine the world around us; our sins mar the beauty and goodness of creation and darken the image of God and His likeness in us. For this reason, this day, we’ll ask each other’s forgiveness, whether or not we have any ‘personal’ sins to forgive.

Sometimes this journey to healing and growth is painful; it certainly always involves struggle because the coping patterns and habitual sins we’ve become accustomed can be so ingrained in us, being part of the fallenness around us and inside us. Forgiveness is a big part of this healing, which is why it’s not an ‘optional’ part of our life in Christ.

While forgiveness isn’t always easy, it’s also not always instantaneous. Forgiveness can sometimes necessitate an active and ongoing decision and attitude, e.g., “I want to want to forgive. Help me, Lord!” We may need to pray for that ability to forgive daily. This can also be part of the healing and growth in humility that enables us to receive Christ’s healing. When we actively forgive, we become more like God Himself, who forgives us willingly; we become more fit to be in communion—in the near presence—with holy God.

With this objective in mind—with Christ before us—I encourage you, to beseech the Holy Spirit to open your heart to this work of healing in your soul as we participate in the Rite of Forgiveness this day and throughout our Lenten journey. May this season be the beginning of a deeper, abiding love for Christ, a desire to bring His Kingdom to bear on our daily lives, to more fully follow the only way that leads to life—the life that Christ God alone is.

In this renewed spirit of mutual love and forgiveness, we journey with Christ through the desert of the next 40 days and on to the cross and resurrection on the third day. May our treasure truly be found in heaven as we prioritize the life in Christ above all else, so that we truly meet Christ and through Him find increased freedom from the passions and growth in His divine grace. Then and only then, His victory over sin and death will become ours as well.

 pravmir.com