The time of year, November, is a paradox: the sun rises through mist and peers directly into your eyes. Each day it stands lower in the sky. Each day, while it gives up its abundance, it stares more searchingly into your being, for signs of the poverty, the chastity, the obedience, which govern its descent. You must let go of your treasures, let go of everything, if you will follow me, it seems to say.
The words are not popular. But the season points to them. The Spirit of the Time, the Zeitgeist, points to them: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience. Abundance crumbles like dust in our hands and leaves indebtedness. Our limbs stray from the purity of what we need and leave cheapness, a lack of value. We depart from the kinship of our own true nature and find a chimera, a hollow image of freedom. The debt of nations, negative equity, hallucination. The times are calling out for that level searching of your own being.
Raise your arms above your head; bring them down on either side to describe a circle around you. There is your eye of the needle. A caravan of camels, laden with treasures, stops before you. Oh my world! I leave behind your wonders, which were arms and legs and torso to me. Only I will go through. I am poor, chaste with cold, and obedient. Master, will you take me for what I am?
© landar 2011. All rights reserved
Image: Giotto, Allegory of Poverty
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