Government and Greatness: The Contemplative Way, and the Active Way

This is an excerpt from King Jason’s War, that I enjoy. It is, here, entirely out of context, but I’m hopeful that it will still make some sense. It describes, I think, some of what’s going on between the radical Liberals and the radical Conservatives, in these days.

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“It’s amazing, really.” Jason sighed. “They have their expectations of the world, of how it works, and the world just seems to shape itself around them.”

“That is generally the way of it, with noblemen.”

Jason growled, “It’s not just the people. Sure, you’d expect it to be that way with people. All the commoners know that the nobles are in charge, so they conform to the world as the nobles see it. But…I mean…everything. The Eskiem certainly don’t credit our Peers any authority, but look what has happened. The Peers want a war, and the events of the last few hours seem to guarantee one! Reality shaping itself around their expectations.”

“There is more to it than that, Jason—”

“But the worst part is,” Jason took a deep breath, eyebrows furrowing, “the worst of it is being me, living in this world of my own that doesn’t conform to their expectations, but watching their world move right along in spite of me. They see a war as right and necessary, and my little objections—”

“You have not been entirely sure of your objections, Jason.” Robert interrupted, softly, but Jason stopped speaking and listened closely. “Are you suddenly sure that you stand against this war?”

“Not…well, yes, but…. No, I see your point, but even so—”

“They believe, and stand by their beliefs. You doubt, you take time to consider, and your search for real understanding makes you hesitate, makes you wait for more information. Meanwhile, they act in their quick confidence, and the world has left you behind.”

“It’s not fair, Robert. It’s not right that recklessness should have the upper hand.”

Robert started to answer, but then stopped, thinking. Finally, he said, “It’s not necessarily recklessness, Jason. Their path, their whole worldview, is one of confidence and action. Yours is one of contemplation and philosophy. Yours requires patience, and care, and long years to attain its end.”

“But what do I do about this war? This decision must be made today, no matter my own patience.”

Robert looked over and met his friend’s eye. “Are you truly asking my advice? Do you want my answer to that question?” Without hesitation, Jason nodded. “Then here it is: your path has nothing to do with this war, or any one war. Your philosophy is not one that shapes decisions, but worldviews. If you stand against this war, the war will happen anyway. If you become king, you will have a lifetime to change the way this nation views the world around it. My advice, good and true, is to say your piece, and then let the Council make its decision in this matter. Then commit your reign to crafting a world where we will never have to face this decision again.”

Ewww!

Eww. Ew.

Ew.

I read an article about a Chinese cosmetics firm using the flesh of executed prisoners in the formation of their makeup.

Ewwwww!

Habanero Pepper Oil Recipe

From Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s infuriating (read: liberal) weblog. To all my reading public: do not read the rest of the website. Just this one post, with associated comments. I emailed most of you the recipe, but once I got to the comments, I realized those needed to be preserved, too, so here’s your link.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006812.html#006812

Daniel…you’re an exception. You’re allowed to read the rest of her website. None of the rest of you! Seriously. On pain of I’m-not-going-to-listen-to-you-complaining-about-their-extremism.

That is all.

Government: America is NOT a Democracy

HaHA! I have fooled you all. You expect me to spend a page and a half talking about how, technically, it’s a Republic. To that I say “Pshaw!”

America is a very polite, Practical Anarchy.

We are a nation so founded on hatred of tyranny that we established a non-government government. Our greatest political pride comes from our Bill of Rights — protecting the citizens of the country from any actual government — and our Checks and Balances — protecting our government from the terrible responsibility of actually being able to accomplish anything.

Seriously, consider your education in the nature of our government. How much focus was given to checks and balances? You know what “checks” are, in this sense? They’re things that stop forward motion. We have a system in place to prevent the government from going anywhere. We have “balances” to make sure that these checks are equally restrictive on all branches of our government.

We are the first nation (at least to my knowledge) to wholly gloat in the deliberate and successful construction of an impotent government.

We’ve done okay, though, haven’t we? I’m not denying that. When I claim that the U.S. is an Anarchy, I do so in the terminology of political philosophy, not popular media. We have constructed a system that politely tells the American government to stay out of the lives of the American people, and everything will be fine.

What amuses me most is that our Founding Fathers recognized Government as an inevitable aspect of human society so, instead of trying to establish a nation free from Government entirely, they quarantined it.

We provide our government with just enough power, just enough resources, and just enough attention to keep them concentrated on their nonsense, while we go about our lives. Our corporations act, our entrepreneurs act, our charitable organizations and special interest groups and legal teams and community organizations all act, while our government blusters and talks.

We don’t have a representative government at all — instead we have direct representation, in that we have built a society to enable the citizens to express themselves without the interference of a Government.

No, it’s not a perfect Anarchy, and I didn’t claim it was. I called it polite Anarchy, and then I went on to acknowledge that we do have an established government structure. My point is that, practically, the main political concern of most Americans is to keep the government out of their lives. We’re still the Colonialists, who built their own cities, who managed their own affairs, and who were willing to pay taxes to keep the king on the other side of the sea, but willing to fight a war when he actually tried to control their lives.

It’s worked, because of the massive amount of resources available to everyone in our society. When our poor are better off than most of the world’s middle class, we don’t need government in the way so many nations do. We have, in Practical Anarchy, what most nations need rigorous Socialism to achieve.

We have Corporations so wealthy they don’t need tarriffs. We have Charitable Organizations with sufficient volunteer funding to dwarf the public works projects of many developed countries. We have, in our individuals, what most societies only have through the organization and administration of a careful government.

In other words, we’re spoiled. Furthermore, as all spoiled children do, we’re squandering. Governments develop in order to help a society make the most of its resources. Governments organize and control independent elements so that the productivity of the whole can be greater than the sum of their parts. That’s what Governments do.

It’s also what we call tyranny. The importance of the individual must be placed below the importance of the society for the society to fully attain its potential. We as a nation dread that pragmatism, and so we designed a self-contained, cannibalistic system of Government, encased it in a fancy marble shell, and got on with our lives.

Listen to the outcry right now against the Federal government’s response to the Katrina disaster. It’s too slow, it’s unproductive. When it should be rushing in to save people’s lives, something has stopped its forward motion. When the Government should be acting, it is instead quibbling, attempting to assign blame to all of its balanced members.

Look: that’s the way the system was designed to work. That’s what we’re so proud of, in our civics classes. We chose to hamstring our Government and that’s why, right now, the volunteers and the aid organizations and the independent assitance groups have so much more to offer than the Federal response. It’s not a matter of resources, but of structure, and the philosophy that designed our nation in the first place.

God: Christian “Science”

I got this passage from someone else’s blog, which I clicked through to from a blog that makes me entirely furious, every time I glance at it. So, instead of following proper etiquette and linking you to the other blog, I’ll just paste the relevant bit here:

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“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]”

— Saint Augustine of Hippo, De Genesi ad Litteram Libri Duodecim (The Literal Meaning of Genesis), AD 401-415, translated by John Hammond Taylor
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See? That’s a passage from some ancient dude. Credit goes to him, not the chick that brought him up in the first place. If you’d LIKE to read a bunch of people bash on Christians, though, here’s the link to the source blog: http://www.livejournal.com/users/ajhalluk/145379.html

I like the points this Augustine makes, though. I strongly agree with what he’s saying here. Then again, as a Social Constructionist, I’m more readily able to surrender discussions of the nature of reality than many Christians, because I’m basing my faith on something bigger, behind the scenes. Know what I mean?

God: The Lord’s Supper

Quick question, for every single one of you who might possibly have an answer: in what way is What We Do as Communion (and by “We,” there, I mean the group you belong to — Catholic, Methodist, whatever) anything close to the circumstance of the Last Supper?

Consider this very carefully before you completely disregard it: How would our version be any different, if after each of the prayers we injected a single molecule of carbon?

Honestly, I see no other deviation (although a greater degree, but none fundamentally DIFFERENT) from the Biblical account in that extreme than in our own practice.

What is the point? More importantly, why hold up as a fundamental rite something that we have so completely alienated from its origin and stripped of all meaning?

I know those who take comfort from knowing that Christians, everywhere, are doing the same thing at the same time (for a given value of “Christians” and, of course, “same”). I understand that — I understand the value of an inclusive ritual to the maintenance of a distinctive community — however, for that purpose a secret handshake would be exactly as effective.

I suppose a huge portion of what bothers me is…not the name, but implicit in the name. Communion. I ALWAYS thought, growing up, that the name referred to the Communion of the Saints (that inclusivity I just mentioned). It’s the thing that we, as a community, do together. Arguing the topic with friends in college, I discovered for the first time that a lot of people (most of ’em?) think of it as Communion with God. That makes a LOT more sense given our extremely antisocial, library-quiet performance of the rite. It reminds me of a thing we did at church camp one year, when I was younger. “Time Alone With God.” We had fifteen minutes set aside every couple of hours for precisely that purpose. There were no refreshments, though….

Y’see, here’s where it really gets to me. The origin of the ritual is a meal. A highly social meal, where a community forms its inclusive bonds, not through the simple fact of a shared ritual, but through the social experience created by the very acts of the ritual. We use the term “breaking of bread” today to refer to this proper, stylized event, but we get that very wording from a Greek phrase that was practically slang — a very casual phrase meaning, “to get together to eat.” The root of “breaking of bread” practically means “hanging out at Braums.”

I mean, to start, to see the way God operates in his establishing of ritual (at least this particular vein), look at the Passover. It was a family’s dinner. The ritual (that is, the maintenance of the experience beyond the first, actual event) was structured as a conversation the family would have over dinner. “Hey, papa, why are we eating unleavened bread and strangely-cooked lamb?” And his answer incorporated the whole history of the Passover, and God’s redemption of the Israelite slaves.

That exchange became very ritual. The exact wording became important (as far as I understand it), and the whole dinner became something of a script. That’s not a big surprise to me, given what we read in the New Testament of the legalization of the Israelite religion. What does surprise me is that, in our religion based significantly on Jesus’ negative response to that legalization, we have turned our version of the Passover into a more strictly stylized rite than even the Pharisees had done with theirs.

Here are my arguing points: the Lord’s Supper is meant to be a SUPPER. And I’m not focusing on the meal aspect necessarily (on the food, the nourishment), but on the social aspect of eating together. Think of the monthly (or semi-monthly or…occasional) fellowship meals at your church. Think of the socializing. Think of the sense of inclusivity THAT generates.

You’re right. It’s not as poignant as the practice of the rigorous ritual. That’s no surprise to me. That’s WHY we create legalistic rites. It’s to capture as much of the feel of the thing as we can, without having to do the long-term work. We don’t have to build RELATIONSHIPS with all these other Christians, we just have to know that we’re taking the same brand of crackers and the same thimbleful of grape juice at the same time and, boy howdy, we are ONE.

There’s another argument to it. You might point out that Jesus established the Lord’s Supper as a memorial of what he did. He said, “This do in remembrance of me.” You KNOW that’s true, because it’s carved on our…whatever-you-call-it-that’s-not-exactly-an-altar-because-y’know-we’re-protestants. Jesus ESTABLISHED the Lord’s Supper as a ritual to remember him.

But even there…. First of all, in at least one version of that passage, his wording was, “As often as you do this,” which, again, strikes me as more a redirecting of the sentiment of the Passover meal than as the establishment of a new Thing. That aside, he WAS clearly drawing on the basis of the Passover meal (as they were actively participating in the Passover meal when he established his procedure), and the Passover meal was, in the manner of a meal, a memorial. In other words, the memorial was there, within the social experience. It is NOT a private experience, taken concurrently with the rest of a community. It wasn’t in Jewish practice, and there’s no reason to imagine Jesus intended it to be one in Christian practice. We as a COMMUNITY are supposed to share this ritual together, socially, as a reminder of Christ’s gift to us.

As a matter of fact, that’s the whole POINT. The Passover meal, taken in silence, would be nothing other than…gross food. The ritual, the meaning, the POWER of the Passover meal was in the conversation. God established it in that way. It’s the whole point.

Take note. I’ve been accused (and will be forever) of arguing theology toward my own comforts. Y’know, if I’m right about not having to go to church all the time then, hey, I can relax at home during those hours I would’ve had to spend in the grueling environs of a church building. I can’t tell you how much accusations like that offend me, but I don’t generally feel compelled to respond to them. I still won’t.

But look at this one. Reread everything I wrote. The entire point of the Communion, I hold, is to bring us together socially, to bind us in INTERACTION (not observance of the one or two appointed men who speaks a short statement and a prayer). Any one of you who knows me well enough to be reading this, knows how incredibly uncomfortable such a thing would make me.

I’m shuddering at the thought, even now.

But I’m almost certain that’s the whole point of the process. I’m not calling you all to make an ages-old religion more comfortable for me. I’m asking you to look at your Saltine and your Welches and tell me exactly how that process binds you to God. I’m asking you recognize the vast distance between the Communion as we practice it, and the Communion as Christ designed it, and dare to imagine what it COULD be.

The Story of King Jason’s War (Major Spoilers)

Once upon a time there was a boy named Jason, who grew up in a time of war.

He lived in the Ardain, a great land of rolling hills and fertile plains, and the biggest, darkest forest in the world. His home was a little town called Gath-upon-Brennes, which straddled the mighty Brennes river. It was a beautiful land.

For all his life, though, Jason had never had the freedom to explore the Ardain. It was occupied from coast to coast by cruel enemy soldiers. The Ardain made up half of what had once been the FirstKing’s mighty kingdom, but now the whole of the Ardain belonged to the enemy, except for one tiny town, that remained loyal to the king: Gath-upon-Brennes.

One day, in the summer of Jason’s eighth year, a hunting party from Gath-upon-Brennes stumbled across a weary band of the king’s scouts. The hunters were amazed to discover king’s soldiers so deep in enemy-controlled territory. The soldiers were equally surprised, to find people still loyal to the king. Enemy soldiers had chased the scouts for days, and now the king’s men gratefully took refuge in the city of Gath-upon-Brennes to rest and heal.

The enemy came for them, though, and attacked the town. The king’s scouts were impressed by the courage of the townsfolk, but they knew these farmers and merchants couldn’t stand for long against the enemy army. They decided to help, and they taught the people of Gath how to fight. They organized them, and helped them to build barricades and strong bridges, to help defend the town.

These soldiers spent more than a year in Gath, but the time came when they had to return, to report to the king on what they had found. The mayor of Gath, Jason’s father, begged the soldiers to take Jason with them. He was afraid for his son, afraid that the town of Gath could not stand forever, and he wanted his son to live to remind the world to fight. The scouts were reluctant, thinking a young boy would hinder them as they tried to escape back to safety, but they finally agreed.

The journey back to the king was a difficult one, through land firmly in the grasp of the enemy. Many times the soldiers were attacked and had to flee. More than once they were forced to stand and fight. Jason had been raised in a time of war, though, and he knew how to survive. After many weeks of hard journey, the band of scouts found their way to a port held by the king’s men, and caught a ship north, to safety.

When Jason met the king, the king was amazed by his story. Of course, the scouts had sent word ahead of what they had found, and the captain of the scouts had issued a full report concerning Gath-upon-Brennes. But the king was most impressed by little Jason’s words, as he told the simple story of his life in a lone town standing against the occupation. Listening to the boy, the king was struck with an idea.

The king sent Jason through all the lands he still ruled. He had Jason tell his story to all the lords and barons throughout the nation. Now, the enemy had owned the Ardain for many years, since before the death of the FirstKing, and many of the king’s subjects had given up hope of ever winning it back. Young Jason won the hearts of all he met, though, and his story lit a fire in their hearts. He reminded them of the courage, the sense of valor that had established the FirstKing’s mighty kingdom years before.

Jason’s message renewed the desire of the people to fight, and volunteers from all across the land came to the capitol to become soldiers. Suddenly the king had an army again, after years and years of dwindling forces. Suddenly he had the support of the nation, the will of the people to fight a war to reclaim their land. The king began making many plans for the future.

Even as the passion for war swept the nation, though, young Jason was losing his hope. In every lord he spoke with, in every baron he convinced to go to war, he saw first the desperation and the hopelessness that he had been sent to counter. When Jason met these men, they knew that the war could not be won. When they heard his story every one of them gained hope, but Jason remembered the despair in their eyes. He was just a boy, but he remembered the men he met, and the things that they had seen. He remembered their fear, and it became his own, even as he taught them courage. He couldn’t help realizing that Gath probably couldn’t stand for long – that his mother and his father were probably already captured or killed.

After two years of traveling the country, Jason was called back to the capitol. For the first time in decades the king had enough volunteers to fill his army. The whole country was behind the king, dedicated to reclaiming the Ardain. Now Jason was no longer needed, so the king called him back to the capitol to enjoy some rest. He spoke with Jason again, and saw how much the boy had changed, and it made him sad.

Now, the king had no son, and he had established his friend and councilor, Gaihran, to be his heir. When the king saw how much Jason’s message had hurt the boy, the king spoke with Gaihran and asked him to take the boy in, to take care of him and somehow teach him to be happy and hopeful once more.

Not long after that, the king went off to war, pursuing his plans. His campaign was successful, and his army took back several cities along the coast, but before they could move inland the king was taken in battle. The king’s army suffered a grave loss there, and had to fall back to the positions they had already captured.

The king’s forces tried again and again to rescue the king from enemy captivity, but it was no use. When news reached the capitol, Gaihran was greatly grieved. The council of lords insisted that the land needed a leader, so Gaihran assumed the throne with a heavy heart, for he was not a military man. He feared he could never finish the plans that the old king had set in motion. Instead he devoted himself to strengthening the land still under his control, and very much to the education of Jason.

Gaihran was not a young man, and he also had no son. He knew that the old king had intended Jason for his heir, so the new king sent Jason to the most impressive of schools in the capitol. He personally taught the boy how to read official edicts and laws, and the subtleties of politics. He brought Jason with him to banquets and state dinners, to mingle with the lords of the land. And, sometime in between the parties and the schooling and the etiquette lessons, the two found time to sit and talk for hours about the needs of the people and the role of the king.

A strange thing happened, then. Even as Jason was growing up at court, he was becoming a legend out in the world. The people of the kingdom, suddenly seized with a passion for war, had all heard the story of the boy from Gath, who brought word of resistance. Jason’s name was on everyone’s lips, and the people of the nation fell in love with his legend.

Not everyone was a fan, though. There were noblemen at court greedy for power, and they recognized Gaihran’s intent. They began to whisper among themselves that someone older, more powerful and more deserving, ought to assume the throne after Gaihran. They were afraid to make this claim openly, though, because of the boy’s popularity. Instead, they decided to use the church.

During the FirstKing’s reign, he established a single church throughout his lands. After the FirstKing’s death, the church quickly became quite powerful, for all the people of the land were faithfully devoted to the church. Many of the church’s leaders became politicians, and many noblemen sought to ally themselves to influential priests for the power that it granted.

So now, when the wicked noblemen wished to be rid of this boy who would be king, they turned to the church for help. The old king had granted the church the authority to counsel him on matters of faith concerning the nation, and Gaihran had likewise welcomed their advice. When they came to him concerning Jason, he had little choice but to listen.

Several very powerful leaders of the church met with the king and cautioned him concerning Jason. They said that he was from a peasant family, not one established in nobility, like those of the other lords. After all, hadn’t God established the ranks of nobility to demonstrate the fitness of some men to govern? Gaihran argued that Jason’s father had established himself as a lord of the land, when he became mayor of Gath-upon-Brennes, and that by all accounts he had proven himself worthy of the title.

But the priests were not satisfied. Jason had grown up in enemy-controlled territory, far from the church, and he was separate from his faith. Gaihran argued this point, too, relating how Jason’s family had sought to keep to the tenets of the church, even in the absence of ordained priests. He also reminded them that the boy had been schooled in the ways of the church since his return to the capitol, worshiping in good grace at the very cathedral of the men who were challenging him.

The men of the church would not be put off, but they also could not convince Gaihran to forsake the boy. Finally, they both agreed that Jason should have a private tutor assigned to him, a priest of the church, who could guide and advise him – and keep the church informed on the boy’s attitude and disposition.

The priest they assigned was Robert deMont, the son of a very powerful bishop. Robert had long spoken against war, preaching pacifism, and he was granted charge of Jason in order to thwart his call to war. The church and the noblemen who were against Jason hoped that they could hurt his popularity by distancing him from the war movement that had made him powerful in the first place. They could not have known that Jason himself had already lost all hope for a successful war.

Nor could they have known Robert and Jason would become such close friends. Robert was only a few years older than Jason then, and the two of them began to spend more and more time together. The two of them would go for rides in the royal parks, or sit for hours in the royal library discussing some piece of literature or history, or some philosophical idea that Jason had recently encountered. Always their discussion came back to war, and the rights and responsibilities of kings.

Life went on like this for several years, and Jason grew up. He fell in love with a girl named Myriam, and stole her away from a powerful young lord (making an enemy for life). He learned about the world from Robert, who had traveled even farther than Jason, and been at liberty the whole time. He began to enjoy the luxuries of life at court, and to some extent he forgot the horrors of his childhood.

Then one day Jason heard the news. The kingdom was rising to war again. There had been no real change in the state of things for years – ever since the day the old king was taken in battle. Now, all of a sudden, the call to war went out across the land. It caught Jason by surprise, and he went to Gaihran to protest.

Poor old King Gaihran could do nothing. He told Jason that these were ancient plans of the old king’s, set in motion long ago, and that the council of lords had decided to act on them. Public sentiment was still strong for war, and the army had been growing ever since Jason’s tour of the land many years ago. Now they had a mighty army (mightier than it had been since the Crusades, centuries ago). The noblemen cried for blood.

Jason went before the council in protest, demanding that they reconsider. He regretted the thought of the lives lost. He challenged the call to war in the central square, eloquently recalling the death of the old king, and of the FirstKing before him – great men who had died needlessly for the sake of war.

Gaihran watched this protest sadly, for he knew the young man could not win this fight. He did not try to convince Jason – he only warned him once, that the men with whom he struggled were powerful men, and when Jason would not listen, Gaihran relented. He understood the boy’s passion, and his devotion to ideals. He also understood the politics, and his heart grieved for Jason.

It was in those days, as the council prepared for war and Jason contested them, that Gaihran grew very ill. He had been sickly for years, and he’d seemed too feeble for his age ever since the old king had gone, but now his situation rapidly worsened. He had a sudden fever, and within two days he had died. Some whispered that he had been poisoned, that corrupt noblemen had conspired to kill him. Others said it must be some plot by the enemy.

Jason was crushed by the death of the king, who had been as a father to him for many years. He listened to the rumors – perhaps listened too closely, and too readily believed them – and he immediately began searching for some evidence of misdeed. What he found was far worse.

Traitors within the city were conspiring with the enemy, providing information on troop movements and plans. Even as the king’s great army sailed east, to prepare for an assault on the Ardain, the enemy soldiers were secretly amassing a force on the capitol isle itself. Jason learned too late that several towns had been captured, their citizens slain to protect the secret. The enemy knew that the army was away, knew the weakest points of the city, knew when and where and how to attack….

And Jason learned that one of his friends was among the traitors. In his search, Jason had gathered some of the king’s personal guards, and as they raided the traitors’ haunts, they came across a meeting of them, and there was a scuffle. Most of the traitors were slain, his friend Kevin threw himself at Jason’s feet, and begged for mercy. Jason ordered him imprisoned, and the young man was led away, still begging for pardon.

The traitors seemed to be dealt with, then, but the real threat remained. It was a terrible day for Jason, as he tried to prepare the city for the attack that he knew would come with nightfall. While he was trying to find soldiers to defend the town, Jason was summoned to a meeting of the council of lords. He reluctantly agreed to go, intending only to stay long enough to warn them of the attack, but at the council he learned that he had been named Gaihran’s heir, according to the will.

Immediately the wicked noblemen on the council began speeches on his inability to rule, but Jason silenced them all. In a terrible rage, he called them down for their petty politics. He told them of the threat to the city, of the attack yet to come, and of the role of the traitors in Gaihran’s death. Many among the council sat stunned, but Jason gathered the wiser and more experienced of them and took them off to prepare for the attack.

The enemy came by night, in a fight reminiscent of the defense of Gath-upon-Brennes, many years ago. Then, the king’s scouts had stood by the courageous citizens of Gath that the legend might live. Now Jason rallied the Royal Guard to the city’s defense, and he fought beside them. He protected the city he had come to love, and that night they were victorious. The enemy retreated with the coming of the dawn.

But cruel justice came on the heels of victory. The people of the city had heard of the conspiracy, and called for a judgment on the traitors. The council spoke with Jason, warning him not to upset the people, and with a heavy heart Jason pronounced Kevin guilty of treason. The king watched as his friend was hanged in the central square.

The council of lords gave him no time to grieve, not even time to think. Immediately they summoned him once more to a meeting, hoping to deliberate his fitness for rule (as he had thwarted them before with news of an attack on the city). They demanded that he meet with them and he consented, asking only that they grant him a few hours to rest. He asked time to go for a hunt with his friend Robert, and the council consented.

The two friends went to the king’s retreat, far away from inquisitive ears, and spent the whole of the day walking its fields and forests, discussing Jason’s situation. They spoke of the horrors of war, and of its inevitability. They spoke of the glorious dream of nationalism, and the ugly reality of wars of conquest. They spoke of kingship, and the responsibilities of lords. They spoke of abdication, and of usurpation. They spoke of old times, of their long years of friendship, and they laughed much, in between the serious talks.

At sunset, Jason sent word to the council that he was ready, and by the time he arrived in the city, the whole council was gathered. Those who sought to overthrow him were waiting for his claim to weakness, his insistence on peace – they intended to use his pacifism as an excuse to remove him from power.

But Jason showed no weakness. He stepped before the council of lords and told them his firm decision: for the sake of the nation, they would go to war. For the memory of the land the FirstKing had forged, they would go to war. To reclaim what was theirs, they would go to war.

King Jason’s war was glorious. He sailed east and rode with his army into battle. He led his men into the fray, calling orders and executing the old king’s clever plans, and within a year the whole of the northern coast was in the king’s possession once more. They moved inland, and sometime late in the second year of his campaign, Jason rode with a contingent of guards over the rolling hills to look down upon the little village of Gath-upon-Brennes.

The pretty hamlet was menacing now, a fearsome fortification, and Jason could see patrols roaming the walls even as the king’s army moved to surround the town, securing the land for miles in all directions. The town still stood, after all these years, and now Jason could see the FirstKing’s banner flying over the town. No secret resistance, but a true bastion of loyalty.

And Jason crossed the fortified bridges into the town, remembering their first construction in his childhood. He walked through the massive iron gates that had held enemy soldiers at bay. He walked onto the village green, where he had spent so many hours playing as a boy, and he remembered his mother and father walking across the green toward him, arms out, smiling and laughing….

And there they were, walking out to meet him. They were older – far too thin, but clearly still strong. Jason’s father shook his hand like a stranger, then knelt before him. Jason raised him up, laughing, and caught his father in an embrace. He hugged his mother tight, and he could not stop smiling. He had found his home again.

Greatness: Change

It’s easier to initiate change on objects in motion than on those that are sitting still. Once change happens (for good or ill), you have a special opportunity to initiate a little change of your own.

It’s complicated, though. Sometimes you want to make a change in a particular directions, other times it’s toward a particular destination. Chaos is GREAT for initiating a change in direction. It’s too random to target a precise destination, though.

Every now and then, for precisely this reason, it’s good to spread a little chaos of your own. Mix things up (harmlessly, of course, if you can manage it), and then bend the world in the direction you want to go.

But the other aspect is the real point of this post. Sometimes the world changes violently, against your will. Lemons and lemonade, my friend. You can mope once things have settled down (you won’t REALLY know how bad the change was until it’s over ANYway). Meanwhile, spend your energy making what good you can.

That’s my advice, anyway. Also, live well.