Illumination and Regret

We have met the ferryman before, so I wasn´t surprised to find him like this again, playing Death´s violin in the centre of his thirteen marble pillars of decay. Today we have not come before him to request his service, but in search for answers. We approached him slowly and when he spoke, the only thing showing his awareness of our presence was the slightly decreasing volume of his play. “Lucifer and Lilith. I must admit, I did not expect you to return this quickly. “His voice was toneless, yet had an unmistakable tone, like vocal cords turned into strings scratching over an instrument made of bone. “You expected us?” Lilith asked. The ferryman stopped playing and turned towards us, his violin disappeared into black smoke. Smoke, what´s that supposed to be, a preachy mockery? “Eventually. I know things you do not, so it was only a matter of time for you to disturb my play once more to formally request knowledge you do not possess. “Entitled and eloquent as ever, but in his case, we had to accept his pompous mannerisms to a greater extent. The ferryman´s power reached far beyond the simple transfer of souls into heaven and hell, but nobody knew for sure how powerful he truly was. Still no reason to speak in so goddamn confusing riddles all the time. “If you knew we would come “, I tried to mimic his rhythm of speech but failed, no wonder, „you must also know why we´re here, Mr. I know things you do not. “Lilith laid her hand on my shoulder and put on her condemning look. She had thin but noticeable rings under her eyes which lost much of their usual fiery brown sparkling. Her whole body seemed drained of energy, her clothes worn down and the temporary absence of Asmodeus added a pinch of uneasiness to her exhausted mood. As well as to mine. Our argument was rough, the separate night lonely. I nodded to signal her I understood, I should be calm and respectful when speaking to him. Now she took the lead, trying to compensate my slip up while also managing her own confused and desperate sorrow. “His time on earth and my viewpoint from hell shaped us into cast out rebels. We wanted to create a world of our own.” She paused, swallowing. I stepped in to continue, now calmer than before. “We independently built the same distrust: How was all of this possible, why did God nothing to prevent misery and injustice when it occurred?” The question had lingered for some time in our minds, but now being said out loud instantly took away a bit of the hopelessness Lilith and I were stuck in. The ferryman raised his hooded head to the stars. Where a face would have been, there was only a deep black void of nothing, not even a skull. “Now, this is knowledge I possess, and I am able to pass it on to you. Given the gravity of this information, I am now the one who must ask a question: Possessing this knowledge will significantly alter the way you perceive the world and the actions you have taken, are you willing to proceed?” I consulted Lilith with an uncertain look. We wanted to know the truth, but what if the truth revealed we were wrong? She evaluated the same point. “What if this makes us regret our choice, reveals we made a mistake? I mean, we - “Her eyes were staring through me. She was reliving what we had done, the fire of liberation turning into the fire of suffering. “We already made a mistake “, I said, concluding her thought. Our discussion of it had resulted in a separately spent night. “But not being aware of your mistake doesn´t make it less wrong. It could even be helpful, to make sure you won´t do it again.“ A reference to my argument during our discussion, which Lilith acknowledged by raising her right eye brow and adding her own: “Being in a position of power brings both opportunity for choices and responsibility for consequences, you can´t outrun them for long. We want to proceed.” We faced the ferryman with a straightened back and a broken mind. “Yes, we do.” I´m not sure if he was able or even in need to breathe, but it seemed like a silent flow of air was ejected from the blackness of his robe. “So be it. The information addresses God and his motives for actions taken and not taken.” An unnerving tingle started to form in my body. This was it, finally I would get something to give meaning to centuries of frustration. The ferryman continued. “I have sensed your anger and resentment about God´s intentions in the past Lucifer, as I sense them in you now. Believe me when I say, he never stopped caring, he never stopped loving. He had his own way of showing his feelings and sometimes this led to misunderstandings.” Now I had to take a deep breath, mostly to ease the so familiar stream of rage questioning everything. “His own way of showing feelings? He disappeared, didn´t listen to prayers and left the world in the hands of fanatics desperately trying everything to stay in power. If he really cared and loved, nobody noticed.” The ferryman folded his skinny and emaciated hands, hiding them in the wide sleeves of his black-grey robe. “Such a pity. Jesus would have had more compassion for his father´s love.” I countered. “I used to have compassion, but because of father´s inability to show his love I had to become someone who didn´t need someone else´s love or permission to act.” The rage began to subside and cleared the space for images of fire. “And so we did “, said Lilith, with a mix of pride and regret in her voice. “But the question remains, why did he do absolutely nothing to prevent all this?” Now the hooded head fixated Lilith and me. There were now eyes, yet I felt like he stared condescending right into our souls, revealing every single detail of our lives. “The question is not, why God did not intervene in the human world – or when you two burnt Eden to the ground. The question is, was he even there to notice it in the first place?” Silence. The nervous tingling sensation in by body stopped for one heartbeat, then turned into emotional thoughts of chaos, blocking almost every rational attempt of disclosure. What? God was – gone? Dead? “This can´t be,” I mumbled, “I spoke to him, back then. I felt his presence… Well, I have felt it, it weakened the more time went by.” Lilith put on a frown and wrapped her pinky in one of her brown strands. “If he was there at some point and then later vanished, something must have happened. What was it and why -?” she thought out loud. “Wait a minute,” I interrupted her, “you mean it´s true, he willingly did not intervene? He actively chose to let this happen?” I tried to temper myself, but the century-old fury was about to boil again. “I see your anger as a sign of trying to grasp the cosmic processes in this universe, which is good. And as you will soon see, there was a reason for all of it.” This time it was Lilith who temporarily lost control over her feelings, her voice cut the air like a butcher knife the body of an animal. “You seriously want to tell us that there was a reason for all this to happen, that it was right to let people torture each other to death, oppress the weak and poor and start wars over who was the most god-fearing?” Although it was clearly meant as an accusation towards him, the ferryman maintained his neutral upright posture. In retrospective, I believe he endured our emotional outrages because he respected the overall theme of our cause. He must have had understanding for what we´ve been through and therefor was more forgiving. “There is a difference between explanation and justification, Lilith.” the ferryman said. He raised his right hand and stretched out his fingers, reaching to the stars above us. His gesture made the round platform and the marble pillars on it disappear. We were drawn into the vast dark space between the stars and found rest on a small planet with a wide landscape of mountains, hills and deserts made of tiny rocks. The ferryman returned his hand to the other one in his sleeves and began to tell the most fucked up fairytale imaginable. “I was approached by God a long time ago. He requested my service to transfer him to a place outside of this universe, which you see here, a single small planet circling around a long-forgotten star. When we arrived, he shared his revelation with me. He created the universe as an all-mighty creator in charge of it, holding supreme power and ruling over every living thing, be it a celestial being such as angels and demons or lesser beings like humans and animals. However, God concluded that the existence of one deity capable of controlling and altering the universe at will is not in the best interest of live. All living beings should be at liberty to act as they see fit and not having to answer or obey to a higher authority, be it a self-imposed government or an otherworldly leader. Having reached this conclusion God decided to let life be – and to abandon his throne. He let go of his powers as the all-mighty and all-knowing God. He stepped back from creation to make space for a new era of liberation.” Another silence. The only motion was the dim light of the nearby star. The glowing started to pulsate and in the rhythm of the pulsating light a painful insight closed in, step by step. Yes, we were wrong. Not cleansing the guilty with fire was the mistake, but the reason, the foundation of our entire rebellion. The tingling in my body was gone, I felt nothing anymore. All tension in my muscles flew away and numbness overcame my embittered anger. I looked at Lilith, hoped she would have had a cure to comfort me in the weary lake of senselessness I started to drown in, and was shattered by the sight. She, too struggled to make sense of this, quickly moving her eyes from left to right, as she always does when she is overstimulated with feelings. God gave up his power – to liberate life? While we destroyed his paradise to achieve the same. It all made sense now. He never stopped loving and never stopped caring… He did so, just in his own way. Lilith grabbed my hands, a little tear rolling down her cheek. “We were wrong, so wrong,” she whispered, “wrong and right at the same time. I – I can´t…” Her face made me feel differently than numb. Deep in my heart began a river of remorse which navigated trough my lungs and finished in my brain as an ocean of regret. What have I done? I remembered my life on earth, how I tried to make a difference in a world ruled by chaos and who ever shouted the loudest. “I prayed to him in pain to stop all this fanatic madness, he didn´t answer. I tried to preach, to enlighten the people, they didn´t listen. I cursed him for letting me – his own son – die on that fucking cross!” Lilith and I were standing there, our arms intertwined in comfort and minds united in regret. Lilith said quietly: “He never intervened, not because he didn´t care. He did it because he chose our freedom over his own power.” It all made sense now. “I´m sorry, I´m sorry…” Lilith understood this apology wasn´t meant for her. I gently let go of her and turned back to the ferryman. Being stripped of every rational or analytic thinking capability I had only one thing left to cope with such a mind bending, shocking revelation: my beloved sarcasm. “So, God is an anarchist now?” “I can not speak about God´s opinion on human political systems, but judging from his decision an anarchy would probably most fitting to his actions.” I looked to Lilith. “So – what do we do now? How does it affect what we have done?” She looked down to the field of small rocks and grains. When she looked up, I saw confidence and uncertainty. “We can´t undo what happened in Eden. It was a justified choice. Knowing the why behind our cause changes everything, though. We should thoroughly reconsider if we want to do something like Eden again.” I nodded. “Now that we can blame nobody but ourselves. God´s choice has been made, now it is time for us to choose. We can´t go on like this, burning fanatics with hellfire and then heavily arguing about the collateral damage it caused. It was the appropriate judgement at the time to put an end to the suffering, still… We assumed wrongly about God´s reasons to maintain his No-action-facade. I don´t want to do this again and I don´t want to have as drift apart because of it.” Lilith smiled, for the first time since the argument. “Me neither.” One aspect was still unknown. “And after he gave up his powers, what happened to him, where is he now?” The ferryman remained silent for a moment. “The current location of God and the further shape of his existence elude my knowledge.” I chuckled, trying to brighten Lilith´s smile. “Finally, some piece of knowledge you don´t possess, ay?” It worked; she even chuckled a bit herself when she said: “I think it´s time to return to Asmodeus. I´m desperately in need of a comforting hug.” I acted offended. “What, am I not enough for you?” She shot back. “No, you´re not. Sometimes I need a four-legged man to fully feel appreciated.” Before I could continue our teasing conversation, the ferryman interrupted. “As you speak of him. Next time please bring that wolf companion of yours. It has been a long time since I enjoyed the company of such a beautiful being for a period of time that exceeded the duration of its transfer.” I made a small yet respectful bow, thanking him nonverbally for his time. “We sure will.” The ferryman raised his hand once more to let the mountains and hills transcend into the marble pillars of his platform. I still was unconsciously processing what we had discovered just then. “After all I have revealed you,” the ferry man said, “surely you will give me time to ask one last question.” Lilith stood beside me, still holding my hand. “Ask whatever you want, it still wouldn´t be enough to pay you back.” In his hands materialized black smoke, which transformed into his violin. He slowly started to play. “What will you do after gaining this knowledge? Will you take different actions and make other choices? Have you learned something?” I raised an eyebrow, doing my best to sound as playful as when teasing Lilith and not provocative. “Have you?” The ferryman increased his play and replied with a small bow. Not bad. “You didn´t answer the question.” Lilith headed towards the chariot and leaned against the casing with her arms crossed. “We regretted what we did, we decided we couldn´t go on like this – the fact that we felt this proves we learned something. And what we´re going to do – will be decided once we return.” She didn´t move. “Wouldn´t you say that, although he was all mysterious as ever, the ferryman was right? It did change how we see the world. We only have to figure out how it changes us. And our future choices.” I answered with “Agreed”, knowing she was right.