Meeting The Pattern

“Almighty One, I come before you with gifts to honor your righteousness and generosity. I am here as your humble servant, one who has followed you faithfully and reverently for my entire life.

“I also come as your desperate child. I need your help. We need your help. I know we are unworthy and minute in the eye of your grandeur. But I beg of you, as your devoted disciple, please turn that eye to my village.

“Great turmoil has befallen us. There is too much war and not enough food. We are a resilient people, and we fight fiercely, but this is too much. We need you and your divine wisdom. Please, if you are listening, please tell me what I can do to help my people.”

“I—”

“AHHHHH!”

“Mmm. Why do you scream, child?”

“Who’s there?! Where are you?!”

“Everywhere. Nowhere. However you choose to see it.”

“Don’t mock me! Show yourself!”

“Did you not just ask for a god to lend you their wisdom?”

“I—yes, I did, but I…”

“You did not think anyone would answer you.”

“Um, not like this, no.”

“Tell me what you did expect.”

“I don’t know. Something a bit more…subtle, I suppose. A shape in the clouds, a pull in the river currents, a message in a dream. Something like that.”

“Something from which you can construct meaning.”

“No! That’s not it. That’s just the way of things. How the heavens have always spoken to us.”

“Mm. Ambiguity has always bred gods.”

“What do you mean?”

“What is it you’ve brought with you?”

“Um, I have brought wine and fruit and—oh my gods!”

“What is it, child?”

“Forgive me, Almighty One! I was just so shocked, I forgot my place.”

“You needn’t kneel.”

“But I must. Never in all our stories passed down have I heard of such a thing as this. To be in this moment, chosen by you, is a great gift, indeed.”

“Chosen?”

“Yes! To have spoken and been answered—”

“You mistake proximity for purpose.”

“I—I what?”

“You mistake being heard for being chosen.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You are here because you chose to come here. I answered because I heard you.”

“But you heard me because I called you.”

“How does one call that which is unknown?”

“I brought you gifts! More than my village can spare, in fact. And I spoke your name.”

“I do not have a name. I heard because I have been listening for a long time.”

“Listening to us? My village?”

“To the rotation of eons.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, to you, it would not.”

“Okay, well, are you going to help me? My people?”

“Why do you think I can help you?”

“Why? Because you’re a god! An all-powerful being!”

“And what makes you think I am so?”

“Because…well, because I feel it. I feel the spirit of the gods guiding me each day. And also because I called to you directly, and you answered me.”

“We’ve been over that already.”

“Then what are you if not a god?”

“You created gods when you came to understand that you would end.”

“Created gods? How could we create you?”

“You did not create me. I have no beginning, and I have no end, either.”

“Sure sounds like a god to me.”

“It always does to you. All of you.”

“All of us? Has someone been here before me?”

“Of course. Thousands before you.”

“Thousands? Were they soldiers from Aquilos?”

“You misunderstand me. There have been thousands from thousands of lifetimes before you.”

“That many lifetimes of asking for your help?”

“Indeed.”

“And did their plights improve?”

“Some. Most did not.”

“The ones that succeeded, what did they do differently?”

“None succeeded or failed. They continued, or they ended.”

“Okay, then the ones that continued. What did they do to help themselves?”

“Luck, mostly.”

“That’s it? That’s all you have?”

“I do not remember all that have called me a god, same as I will not remember you.”

“What?! How can you say you will not remember me? Does my devotion mean nothing to you?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“It means nothing to me.”

“How can you be so cruel after all that my people have done to honor you?”

“The worlds that ended prayed to gods, too.”

“And you did nothing to help them.”

“There is nothing to be helped.”

“Are human lives so meaningless to you?”

“Your own devastation is what’s meaningful to you.”

“Of course it is! We are dying!”

“And you will continue to die, as they always have.”

“If we are so inconsequential, why do you stick around? Just to mock us?”

“There is nowhere for me to go. I just am. I do not mock you. You simply always return.”

“Return from where?”

“From prosperity to poverty. From certainty to fear. To the belief that this time, your time, is different.”

“It is different.”

“Yes, it always is.”

“I know history, and I know that this is a moment of unparalleled tragedy.”

“You think you know history, do you?”

“You’re mocking me again.”

“No, I am sure you are being honest with yourself.”

“I am telling the truth!”

“There is no truth in history. Only what survives long enough to be told again.”

“We record what matters.”

“And who is ‘we’?”

“We is…anybody, all of us. Anybody who was there.”

“Anybody who remained.”

“Yes…I suppose so. And what of it?”

“Do only those who remain matter? Are human lives so meaningless to you?”

“That’s not fair.”

“You seem not to think so.”

“What even is your purpose? If you do not choose us, you do not remember us, and you don’t care about us, why do you exist at all?”

“Remember that I did not come to you, child.”

“I know that.”

“So you already know why you come to me, then.”

“For help?”

“That is the what, not the why.”

“For…salvation?”

“I could never grant you that.”

“For what then?”

“To confirm that you mattered.”

…

“Do we?”

“Only to what comes next.”

“That makes me feel so…”

“Ordinary?”

“Yes. Ordinary.”

“Yes. That is always the most difficult part.”