Many years ago I would tell stories to my niece when she was little (She is now 25), I would call her from work to tell her stories on my breaks. She always asked for stories with princess’ that had her name, with magic and dragons. Here is one I wrote just for her.
Once upon a time, in a place far, far away, there lived a large family of dragons. They lived in a beautiful cave high up in the mountains. They had a wonderful view of the sky and of the forest below. They were very happy with their life, all except the newest member of the family, Seymour. He was only a baby. He couldn’t breathe fire yet and his wings were much too small for him to fly. He was very sad about this because he wanted to go play with the other dragons among the clouds. Instead he had to always stay home in the cave. And nothing fun EVER happened in the cave.
One
day when all the other dragons had flown away to play on the great white
clouds, Seymour sat down and cried. He
felt very sorry for himself. Poor
Seymour, he thought, I never get to have fun.
It wasn’t fair. He was all alone
with no one else to play with. He was
angry and decided to pout for a while.
But that wasn’t any fun because there wasn’t any one there to see
him. Finally in a huff, he decided he
was going to go play in the forest, even though his mommy had always told him
not to go down there by himself. It wasn’t safe for a little dragon because he
could be caught by a hunter and never seen from again. But he didn’t care, he was tired of always
being alone. He didn’t care if his mommy
gave him a spanking when he came back.
He
ran from the cave, excited because he was finally going to have fun. But when he reached the forest it was dark
and scary. He remembered every scary
story he had heard about the forest and he began to be afraid. Suddenly Seymour wished that he hadn’t left
the cave. The trees were huge, with long
gnarled limbs and the forest was all quiet and lonely. He couldn’t even hear a bird singing.
“
I should go home.” Seymour said
aloud.
He
was feeling very scared, but when he turned around to go home he couldn’t seen
his cave. Seymour looked everywhere and
ran up and down every path he came to but he still couldn’t see his home. He ran and ran until he was too tired to
run. He finally stopped and sat down on
a large mossy rock. He started to cry. The tears were bright as they dripped off his
nose and into the grass. He covered his
face with his paws and cried. “ I’ll never find my way home!”
Somewhere
else in the forest, a pretty little princess, who was only six, with long brown
hair and pretty blue eyes, was picking flowers to take home to her mommy. She had quite an armload and was just about
ready to go home when she heard Seymour crying.
“
Oh that poor little kid.” She thought,
thinking he was a little kid lost in the woods.
She
ran toward the sound of his crying and found Seymour sitting on a rock. She was surprised that he was a dragon.
“
Why are you crying, Little Dragon?” The
princess asked.
Seymour
was startled when he saw her. He was
scared that she might be a hunter.
“
Are you a Hunter?” He asked, watching
her with worried eyes.
“
No, I am a princess. My name is Laurren,
what’s yours?” The princess asked
sitting down beside Seymour on the rock.
“
I’m Seymour.” He said shyly.
“
Why were you crying Seymour?” Laurren
asked.
“ Because I can’t find my way home.” Seymour whispered.
“
I’ll help you find your way home.”
Laurren offered with a cheerful smile.
“
Oh, thank you very much.” Seymour liked
Laurren because she was so nice to him.
“
Where do you live?” Laurren asked.
“
In a cave.” Seymour replied.
“
Well, caves are in mountains. So I will
just climb a tree and see where the mountains are.” Laurren said and she ran to a tree and
started climbing.
She
looked left and right, she could see the trees and the clouds way up high.
“
I found it. I see your cave way up high
in the clouds. I can see all the dragons
flying around up there.” Laurren yelled
down to Seymour.
She
climbed back down and taking Seymour’s hand they walked back through the
forest, up the mountain and to Seymour’s home.
Seymour’s
mommy was so happy to see him she picked him up and gave him a big kiss.
“
Oh Seymour, you scared me so bad. Never
ever go off like that again. Something
really bad could have happened.” She
said.
“
I won’t mommy, not until I am a big dragon with great big wings.” Seymour promised.
Seymour
did keep his promise and he stayed in his cave.
But he wasn’t ever bored again, because Laurren came to visit every day
and they had tea parties and played hide and go seek while the other dragons
flew high in the clouds.
The End
Category: Misc Writing |
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I think in America many of us have a misconception of what the word Jihad
means. After 9/11 the word Jihad became synonymous
with the Muslim ‘Holy War’ against the western world. “What does the Arabic word jihad
mean? One answer came last week, when
Saddam Hussein had his Islamic leaders appeal to Muslims worldwide to join his
jihad to defeat the ‘wicked Americans’ should they attack Iraq; then he himself
threatened the United States with jihad.
As this suggests, jihad is ‘holy war’. Or, more precisely: It means the
legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims
at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims.” (Daniel Pipes, New York
Post, December 31, 2002) as expressed in this New York Post article, this was
Jihad. It became a word that inspired
fear, led us to racially profile and vilify Islam. This was however only one side to the
story. It was a definition that had
nothing to do with the spiritual meaning of Jihad. It saw one man’s political use of religion to
further his own agenda.
We live in a society in which all our beliefs and personal opinions are constantly
being influenced and bombarded by those of others, through TV, magazines, radio
and personal interaction. Ignorance is
like a virus, spreading fear, spreading lies as truths. Unfortunately most people do not see when
ignorance and fear are dictating their beliefs.
The fear after 9/11 for those of us who were old enough to understand
what was happening was something that has been hard to move past. I remember so vividly everything that I did
that day, everything emotion I felt. It
was like walking through a nightmare that you wanted to wake from, but you
couldn’t because it was real. It was
something that would never go away and it changed the face of our world and the
way we looked at the world. For the
first time the United States was filled with the fear of terrorism in a way it
had never been before. That fear took on
a face, took on a persona and unfortunately it was the face of the Muslim
faith. It became the enemy, not the
people who had caused such violence. To
be Muslim or Islamic was something to be feared, avoided and
misunderstood. It was a wave of paranoia
and misunderstanding that seemed to sweep through the nation and the
media.
I knew logically that it wasn’t the religion itself that was to blame, much
like I know logically that it wasn’t the religion of Christianity that was
fully to blame for the Inquisition. It
was the people that used the shield of religion to justify their actions who
were to blame. This was something I
logically knew, but for a time I let my fear win. I found myself scared of the Muslim faith, as
if it were to blame for the fear and pain.
I knew this was wrong and I knew the only way to fight against that fear
was to fight against the ignorance I knew I had of Islam. So I studied.
I took a world religions class, searched online and fell in love with
the purity of the true Islamic faith.
Islam is not about violence, it is not about war, it is about becoming
submissive to the will of Allah. It was
nothing like I had ignorantly believed.
Seeing the beauty of the religion lifted my fear and I was able to
embrace the beauty of it.
Because I lost the fear, I was able to understand what
true Islam was, though I am by no means an expert, I now understood what the
Jihad really was. “Essentially Jihad
is an effort to practice religion in the face of oppression and persecution.
The effort may come in fighting the evil in your own heart, or in standing up
to a dictator. Military effort is included as an option, but as a last resort
and not “to spread Islam by the sword” as the stereotype would have
one believe.” (http://islam.about.com/od/jihad/f/jihad.htm) What it truly
meant, how it is about sharing the word of Allah, of sharing the faith, living
the faith and not about forcing the will of their religion onto others. It is like the Jehovah Witness’ who go
through the neighborhoods, trying to spread their beliefs, trying to bring
everyone into the Kingdom. It is not of
violence, but like many things that are truly beautiful, the Jihad can be
corrupted in the hands of corrupt people.
All things, even things of love, can be twisted by evil minds and evil
hearts. It is only through understanding
and knowledge of the world in which we live, in the religions that are spread
across the earth that we will be able to fight against the darkness of
corruption and fear. Perhaps someday the
fear can be gone and we can stand against those who would use fear and
ignorance as their weapons. Until then,
we all must share our knowledge and be generous to each other. Perhaps it will start a trend.
Resources:
– Daniel Pipes, New York Post, December 31, 2002,
http://www.danielpipes.org/990/what-is-jihad
This is what happens when I start talking to myself in the middle of the night:
“
Take it.”
“
No.”
“
What do you mean, no?”
“
I mean no, what else can that mean?”
“Take
it!”
“
No!”
“
You can’t argue with me.”
“
Why not?”
“
Because I made you.”
“
So?”
“ So, just take the @&^& eight ball! I’m the $%^@ writer and you have to do what I say!”
“
Why?”
“
Because I made you!”
“
But I don’t want the eight ball.”
“
And why not?”
“
Because whoever has it dies. That’s it’s
curse.”
“ I know that’s it’s curse. It’s my story, remember? That is the only reason I wrote you. To take the eight ball and die. That is your purpose in this story.”
“ No! That’s not fair. I don’t want to die. I’m so young, so beautiful! I have so much to live for.”
“
No you don’t. You’re just a minor,
expendable character. Your whole purpose
for being is to die at this point.”
“ That’s so unfair.”
“ I don’t care if you think so or not. I’m the writer, you must do as I say. Take the eight ball.”
“ No, please, I don’t want to die.”
“
When did you get so much personality?”
“
I don’t know, I was born that way.”
“
Are you going to do what I say?”
“
No.”
“
Then who am I going to kill?”
“
Why not you?”
“
Me? I’m the writer!”
“
So? You want some one to kill right?”
“
I made you for that reason.”
“
But I don’t want to die!”
“ Fine, I’ll kill myself. Are you happy now?”
“
Yes, very.”
“
Fine, here goes.”
The
writer sighed and picked up the eight ball and looked at the black number
against the round white circle drawn on it’s side. It was hard to believe that this was
cursed. That was when the bee flew into
the room and stung him on the hand. He
used to be very allergic to bees. I say
used to be because he was now dead.
Category: Misc Writing |
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“Philosophy
as an influence of orienting man to another reality within and outside of
himself has nearly vanished from our culture.
It is time to bring it back.” (Needleman, Pg. 134). Man was never the center of the Universe
until the entrenchment of religious dogma.
He was always the plaything of the Fates, the child of nature, the child
of the earth, one with everything, understanding the finite nature of his
existence. And then we became the ‘Sons
of God’, elevated above a world which now revolved around us. This became our reality until science slowly
began to prove that no; we were no greater than the ants that Needleman studied
when he was only a child and came to his own realization of the finite and
infinite of reality. We have fallen from
a pedestal of immortality, becoming nothing more significant than dust. This is daunting, terrifying and
dulling. We want to matter, we want
proof that we exist and that the world in which we live would be less without
us.
“Why
does it haunt the mind for so many of us, sometimes through the whole of our
lives?” (Needleman, Pg. 139) It haunts us because it is so terrifying, the
thought that we are potentially insignificant, meaningless; nothing more than a
mote of dust dancing on sunlight. We are
nothing to the powers that be, the creators of the machine. It haunts us because we are creatures who
create, we can see the patterns, the lines.
It is the patterns that terrify us because they are not random, they are
not chaos. And if they are perfect, then
we are nothing more than another perfect pattern, inside the perfect pattern.
Perhaps that alone is the main reason we turn away from deeper thoughts of self
actualization. We are afraid to open
Pandora’s Box and find there is nothing left.
Religion,
politics, morals, these are all creations of the ruling class, of those in
power. It is there system of laws,
morals and dogma that will dictate the actions of those over which they
rule. So when one is asked whether there
is danger in a society, any society, of its citizens acting irrationally based
on religious convictions, the answer is undoubtedly yes. Humans as individuals, if presented with
logical and rational argument will not, in most cases, be pushed into an act that
willfully hurts another. However, place
that same man in a group, fire them with words from religious texts, or from an
orator of a belief that he holds dear and watch him and those around him become
a frenzied mass. Man alone is sane and a
being of peace, man en masse is a violent, chaotic being that must be
controlled. It is that very reason that
we have governments and laws, for the common man cannot govern and rule
himself, therefore he is guided by higher ideals, those placed before him by
those in power, politicians and priests, parents and employers. Laws and morals and religious text are
created by the elite not the common man, “Rather
it was ‘the good’ themselves, that is to say, the noble, powerful,
high-stationed and high-minded, who felt and established themselves and their
actions as good” (1).
Religion
subjugates and rules the many, relieving them of the responsibility of moral
conduct. They are told by those that
rule, whether via political stance or religious dogma, how they are to
behave. What is good and what is
bad. Individuality has been replaced by
the fear of displeasing our God. The question of true morality is no longer raised;
humanity follows blindly at the trail dogma leaves for him. There is no responsibility to seek truth, to
seek out the divine, to ask if the God in which we believe is real and
therefore one to serve. We are raised
from infancy to believe and many never question whether that belief is valid or
in fact true. We believe in our shepherds the ones we trust have made
the right decisions. “So we are necessarily strangers to
ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves,
for us the law ‘Each is furthest from himself’ applies to all eternity – we are
not ‘men of knowledge’ with respect to ourselves”(2). How easy it is to lead man down a path of
destruction by simply telling him that the words are right and true, the
actions just. The moment man stops to
think for himself he will pause, step back and question. But one man in a flood of believers does not
keep the tide of religious zeal from destroying those around them.
A
simple glance through history shows us how evil has been done in the name of
God. In our current world we see it and
we are supposed to be an enlightened generation. We are supposed to live in a world of
tolerance and we see nothing but hate based on religious belief. It is not merely the religion that guides us
to these prejudices, because the religion itself, the words and teachings of
the beliefs that spread the globe are things of beauty, which teach love and
tolerance, it is the corruption of man’s ambitions and translations to those
words. It is his desire to control and
use the control that religion has upon mankind to further his cause. The true
believer desecrates the words of his religion, twists them to fit his need
for power. “In some cases, religious believers may not have a clear and self-conscious
understanding of their own beliefs, or may not be particularly adept at
articulating them. However this does not
alter that religious faith rests on beliefs about the kind of object in which
one has faith”(3) The power may not be for lands, or wealth, but it is
still a power struggle that is fueled by holy texts and justified by the words
of God.
In
current history we have seen people sacrifice their lives for their beliefs,
not just the suicide bombers aboard the planes that crashed into the Twin
Towers and the Pentagon on 9-11, but also the Jonestown Massacre of 1978. These events have forever changed the way we look
at religious zealots. The citizens of
Jonestown, Guyana chose to take their lives because they believed Reverend Jim
Jones “to be a living god and to have
raised some forty-three people from the dead” (4). The terrorists aboard the planes believed they
were doing God’s holy work, why else
would they have so willingly given up their lives? Man does not die for any cause greater than
that of his God.
We
look across the sea toward the Middle East and fear Muslims because of 9-11 and
the terrorist’s attacks, but it is not the faith that we should fear, but the
men behind it, controlling its believers.
The teachings of Mohammad are beautiful, so are the teachings of the
Bible but that did not keep Jim Jones from encouraging almost a thousand people
to drink cyanide laced Kool-Aid. If we
are to fear Muslims because of the actions of a few, shouldn’t we also fear
Christians? What about Catholics, they
were the ones who initiated the Inquisition in the twelfth century.
The
current war in the Middle East is not the first time that religion has been the
inspiration, that the true followers
of God have been encouraged to shed blood in the name of the divine. We can follow that path of destruction that
religion has created since before the Crusades led by European Kings to regain
the Holy Land. It was the church that
fanned the fears of the world and gave their blessing to the Inquisition that
ended the lives of thousands of heretics. The Christian Inquisition was created by the
church to eliminate heretics, thereby insuring obedience to Canon Law. The four Inquisitions throughout history were
set up as Tribunals to discover and eradicate heretics, but they were at the
basest core, political power plays, most demonstrably portrayed by the Spanish
Inquisition in which the Royalty incited the Inquisition with the blessing of
the Church. It is not faith and
spirituality that inspires men to destruction and horrors, it is the guiding
hand of government and politics, which twist and use the words of God, no
matter in what form, to spur men on to evil in the name of God. It was the words of the Pope himself in 1252
that allowed the church elders to accuse and incarcerate whomever they chose. “The bishop of a given diocese, omnipotent
by this decree, can, without violating either its spirit or its letter, arrest
and incarcerate anyone in his jurisdiction.”(5) How can we not fear the destruction that man
can create at behest of his faith?
It
is not faith however that should be questioned, but the manner in which it is
pursued. It is not the religion that
should be denounced, but the ignorance with which it is viewed. Man must choose reason over blind faith. Man must find a balance between spirituality
and religion. Religion is the dogma to
which man must conform, but he must find the faith within himself to follow his
spirituality and not allow himself to be ruled by manmade dogma. The end to religious strife may never come,
but it is only through the ignorance of man that it will continue.
Resources:
Quote
1: On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce
Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche
Quote
2: On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce
Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche
Quote
3: Reason & Religious Belief by
Peterson, Hasker, Rechenbach, Basinger
Quote
4: Reason & Religious Belief by
Peterson, Hasker, Rechenbach, Basinger
Quote
5: Ad extirpanda a papal bull by Pope
Innocent IV May 15, 1252,
