Appendix: The Gospel According to a Holy Fool

Summary

I dedicate this to my Mama and my sister Nadiika,

for being the first ones to teach me the power of Love

In the beginning, there was the word, and the word was false, and the word itself became falsehood, dissolving in a black stain on the pure parchment of the human soul.

In the dwelling where Jehovah reigned, there settled betrayal and scorn, anger and deception.

And the word became flesh, and dwelled among us, filled with malevolence and contempt, and we saw its glory and we luxuriated in the exquisite fruits of this glory.

The word became a blade, which cuts up a heart sooner than Cain's knife, and it sprouted intoxicating weeds in sacred life, and became suspended in the air in a myriad of viruses, malignant and hostile.

And evil, begotten with the first foul word, became the Law of Life. And people began to curse with the word, no longer understanding that it is God.

❧

I am a holy fool.

My lineage begins with Moses, and the rocks which the angered Hebrews hurled at him are my undeniable, bitter, exclusive heritage.

When my Lord rests, I—His most loyal guardian—go against the treacherous servants of God, for whom the seventh day is a time for blasphemy and ridicule.

I am he who wants to see those who are distant as my neighbors, though to my neighbors I am infinitely distant.

Not knowing with how many fingers I should cross myself, I paint the Crucifixion in my mind and try it on myself.

I am the Knight of the Absurd, because in every monster I see Goliath. Encased in prison like the brain in a skull, I hover over the pain-racked world with unfettered thoughts.

I see the stigma of death on the face of my planet and I beg God that even when the worst happens, He will send Earth the fate of the resurrected Lazarus.

I am the clown at the fair. I insult people with my noisy insolence, while in my heart I create the Gospel of Forgiveness.

In the moldy prison walls I feel the current of universal pain, and so I laugh like a buffoon, so that the prison guard does not see that I hurt, too.