The angel then asked the prophet, “Wise man, I’ve brought you here to God’s kingdom, God who has trusted me with his faith, to ask you what wisdom you have to offer me.”
The prophet stood like a great oak tree in the light. He spoke in silence with his eyes closed.
“You insult me with silence?”
The wise man then took a deep breath in and exhaled. He then opened his dark eyes and looked up towards the bright figure, but it did not blind him.
“Prophet, why are your eyes darkened?”
“It is because I do not see by the light, but by darkness.”
“What does that mean?”
“To understand one can’t deliberately think, but only sense.”
“You speak to me in riddles. I believed you to be a wise man who travels through realms, helping those that need it. Perhaps I do not need you then.”
“One can only understand when one experiences how it falls apart,” The blind prophet replied.
“What do you mean by that?” The angel asked with confusion on his face.
“This truth has not passed in you. You must wait for its time to come.”
“When will this truth come?”
“When you are ready for it.”
“I’m ready.”
He stood once again like a great oak tree, silent against the wind.
The angel’s wings expanded as he stood, he then flew down from his throne and landed. He stood fearlessly in front of the prophet.
With a low voice that echoed the chamber, the angel said, “I invite you to my court, to be my guest, and you answer me with insolence?”
The prophet said nothing.
“Escort him out.”
The old prophet was seen out, and the angel flew back up to his throne and sat. Later that evening, when the Earth blocked the sun, the angel’s conscience appeared.
“I shouldn’t have treated him that way. What have I become? All these years I’ve been searching for answers and meaning, and I’ve become bold and insolent because I believed I had known all the answers. But what I know is a drop in an ocean. Did he read my mind? Did he know that I was trying to understand God’s system? Where do I look to find ‘how it falls apart?’” The angel began to unravel his ideas, he looked around, first to the Earth, then to the sky and to the stars.
In the darkness an intuition came to him, “Am I supposed to travel into the great beyond, where things are not? Yes, I will travel to the edge of the universe and learn what I can.”
The angel rose from his throne, spread his wings, and shot off into the darkness, further, and further, past the dying stars and floating asteroids. Until the gravitational pull was no more, he shone his light into the darkness, but he saw nothing. He strained his eyes and shone brighter, but it was folly, for he saw nothing. He sat there, cross-legged, in the weightless void for hours until he felt cold, hollow, and alone. Time stood still, experience widened, and a new emotion began to emerge.
“Are there limits to your love, God? Is this what is meant by understanding how it falls apart, like how I fall apart? That the further I stray, the less I am able to feel love, because you’re the source of it all? Yes. I feel cold, hollow, and alone, but there is another sense that is new to me. Is it fear—fear of being alone, of no hope, no future? Fear of the things that will come to pass, a fear that since my story hasn’t ended that my fate is not saved yet? What a cold feeling this is, Lord. Is that the sign of when it has fallen apart?
The angel felt a wave of emotion overcome him, and he shivered. Then he closed his eyes, and images crossed his stream of consciousness of fields on fire, blood-red skies. It was him flying over Earth. Fear flushed his face with horror as he saw explosions hitting the ground and buildings toppling. The angel then awoke in a fright.
“Is it time, is it coming to pass now? I must go!” The angel then spread his wings and shot through space and rounded Earth but all was calm. “This fear, I must go among those who feel it most to understand how things fall apart. Yes, among the thieves and prostitutes, the vulnerable and the suffering. I must become a lonely wanderer under the night sky to understand how it falls apart.
Stephen C. Pedersen 