Dreaming.

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A dream, of great length, breadth, depth, summed quickly as if by a thief in a hurry, as most of it was lost shooting through the waking hole.  There were a thousand voices, faces, bodies, crowding me, imposing on me, demanding, each saying a various heretical thing!  Harrowing, hard, unbending.  I would not yield, they would not relent.

She says there is no such thing as sin.  He says there is sin but it does not matter, God does not really care, or even that God may not exist.  I say God is real, sin is serious, even the little sin.

She says do as you please, so long as it doesn't concern her.  Huh?  He says you can fix anything you do wrong, if caught, so reap your harvest and whatever else you can get away with, of grain, gold, love, and whatever other desserts of the flesh you desire.  I say no.  Take what you earn, even then split out what you really don't need.  But only to those truly in need, not those who could do likewise but choose not to do so.  Drive the lazy from your midst, feed them only sorrow.

She says there is no sin.  He says there is sin, but regardless of intent, sin happens.  Enjoy.  I say while I will sin, I will face away from it.  While I will sin, I will choose against it.  While I sin, I do regret it.  I say direction, with or against God's will, is all I have, and so I choose to face God's path and follow as well as a man can.  Even though to do so means that I know my every sin and the pain of it.  There is joy, too, and it is the greater.  No joy is true without suffering to balance, highlight, contrast.

In this world, I am considered little, weak, a fool.  And to this world I am those things.  And to this world I am dead.  I know, too, through the distortions of time, the world is already dead.  Being wedded to it is akin to sleeping with a corpse.  How others cannot smell the foul nature of it I cannot say.  I will say these things, and again again, until none can hear or I can no longer speak.  And while I will turn the other cheek, to the slight, I will not gladly or easily go into the long goodnight so as to be silenced.

Rough.  It was a brutal dream.  They so wanted me to join with one side or the other.  Hours, days, interrogation, secular inquisition.  No.  Never.  Excommunicated from the world.  So be it.