Post by firefolk on Oct 12, 2008 18:38:35 GMT -5
We left Constantinople in 1099. There were crusades to be battled and crosses to be borne--quests and adventures aplenty for all; and for those for whom it was appointed, there was suffering to spare: scars and dungeons and plagues, and the guttering of faith in the face of human misery and human evil. Each of us was tested in his way, and more than a few of us failed. And of those who prevailed, many indeed perished in the prevailing. Even the strongest and the wisest among us were heard to mutter, betimes, that the road of righteousness might perhaps have been better tended. The specter of Habakkuk walked abroad and was heard to cry in the bitter watches of the night, "How long, O Lord? How long?"
Those of us who made it home, still clung to the hope that one day we might hear spoken aloud the single Word for which we had fought, in which all of our travail would be explained and all of our doubt and fear forever laid to rest. "But can there be such a Word?" I asked the old priest one dark afternoon, when my wounds and my memories weighed upon me. "What single Word could ever be enough?"
And the old priest smiled a smile that was weary with a thousand miles of dust and a thousand days of rue, and he said to me this: "Dear friend, that Word has whispered ever in our ears. But how could we answer the Word which is a Name, until we had learned our own?"
Those of us who made it home, still clung to the hope that one day we might hear spoken aloud the single Word for which we had fought, in which all of our travail would be explained and all of our doubt and fear forever laid to rest. "But can there be such a Word?" I asked the old priest one dark afternoon, when my wounds and my memories weighed upon me. "What single Word could ever be enough?"
And the old priest smiled a smile that was weary with a thousand miles of dust and a thousand days of rue, and he said to me this: "Dear friend, that Word has whispered ever in our ears. But how could we answer the Word which is a Name, until we had learned our own?"