Falling Off the Blog

- for Dorothy…

©2007 Archiereus Publishing

In the living meadow of Silkwere Forest, the grass is green, the sky is a tumbling joy of clouds and blue, the light wind whisps softly through the odd soft bush and the perimeter of the meadow is lined by tall secure warm pines. But these are not just any pines, these are living pines. They think. They are sentient. They love. They hurt. They feel. They watch across the eons the lives of the animals that inhabit the forest.

Deer and bear alike drink from the circular glassy pond in the middle of the meadow with no fear of each other. Almost as if a magic comes over them when they enter the clearing…no harm shall come to anyone in this place. Fear, Anger, Aggression, Abandonment, Loneliness, Anxiety and Lack all flow out of the feet of each animal as it pads through the magical grass. It flows into the absorbing blades such that when they reach the pond, they are free from their animal instincts and are able to create themselves in the order of mankind’s potential: enlightenment. 

Can you see the negative beingness flowing out of their paws and hooves as they walk? Can you sense the release of the burden that they feel? Can you see their lightness at the pond? Can you turn up the colors and sounds of the meadow in your mind’s eye and see yourself standing on the same grass with the creatures? Fearless? Full of joy? A pillar of beauty amidst beauty? Luminescent. But the animals can’t see you. Are you there now? Good.

In this land, there is no need for words, only feeling, and the feelings are light. The trees feel too and give off powerful ambient atmospheric pheromones.

But there is one tree in the grove of living trees that is cursed. It has been cursed from the Dark Wind of the Gorge. By no fault of its own, the Dark Wind has made the tree a stalwart impregnable fortress of dark energy. Forever bound to the earth and reaching to the sky, the surrounding trees have done their best to grow at an angle away from it. 

As you soar towards it to get a better look, there, you see him. 

Benny, the rabbit. 

Benny has also been accursed by the Dark Wind, but unlike the tree (which had done no wrong), Benny had stopped believing. He questioned his power. He doubted his importance. He began openly mocking the gifts he’d been given. He became cynical and depressed. His little hind legs stopped bouncing as high. He couldn’t run with his friends as well. In fact, his friends didn’t want to be with him, because they couldn’t understand why he would use words…and the words he used were so foreign to them…the dark words. Words that showed that he didn’t believe in the creator’s magnificence. In the design. In the great plan. He doubted. He got scared. 

The poison from the words became so deep that even the grass could not absorb it…and then…the Dark Wind heard his voice and made his fears a reality. For that’s all the little bunny wanted: to be right. To be right that the universe was not a safe place. That he was weak. That it all was so unfair. It was as though he had lost sight of the abundance that was right in front of him…everywhere. It was as if it wasn’t enough. 

Poor Benny. Dark Wind chained him to a tree…Cursed Tree. No one had ever gone near Cursed Tree until Benny was chained to it. Benny was sad. He realized that he’d created all this. He used his words to try to apologize to the bears and moose and his fellow rabbits…but they couldn’t understand him. Apologies existed abstractly outside of peace, freedom and abundance…outside of feelings.

The worst part was that Dark Wind gave Benny the key. The Key to unlocking the chain! But Benny was too ashamed. He knew that he had screwed up. He deserved to be chained to the tree. He had to be right. 

“See? I AM worthless. I deserve this. Everyone is better off without me in the meadow. Even the meadow’s sheeny grass can’t cure me.” 

And so it went that Benny would hop around and around the tree, his little hind legs chained. The key became a companion…the only thing that would stay with him all the time…and the tree. Eventually, he forgot that the key even unlocked the chain. His life became used to the chain, and everyone in the meadow came to understand that Benny had become happy at the Cursed Tree. Everyone seemed to forget that he himself was cursed. They began to play with him and visit him a lot more. Now, although he was still chained and could only hop so far, people began to forget that he was different than they. In time, Benny could even jump as high…no…higher than the unchained bunnies! 

Life was good again. The chain had become his friend…his identity. And the key was forgotten. He had overcome. Soon, his beautiful brown white-speckled fur became dark pink with the toxicity of his imprisonment. Even Cursed Tree began asking his fellow treemen what to expect from this new kind of rabbit. But the oldest of the trees had never seen the like. It was very strange.

Do you still see Benny sitting at the tree, now? Do you see his little body hunched and forlorn? 

Benny secretly wishes for someone to free him. He wishes that a bear would come and rip the chain and take him under her wing. Or maybe even one his fellow Shihine. Any of his rabbit friends could easily manipulate the lock and key. They could take him into their coven. He would hide and be cared for by them. He wouldn’t be a nuisance any more. 

He knows that it will never happen. Not unless he asks for help… but he can’t do that. The chain has become who he is. The easiest thing would be for him to unlock himself, but then, wouldn’t he be just like he was before? Scared? Miserable? Lonely? Who would he be then? How could anyone accept him? “My life isn’t that bad!” he’d console himself. “Besides, I got what I deserve. I’m okay with it. I’m even better than the other rabbits.”

The sun is now rising on the next day. Dark Wind blows through the meadow before any animals wake. He decides to find Benny. Expecting to find him among the other rabbits, he is shocked to see the altered rabbit still chained to Cursed Tree. He becomes enraged and yells at the Shihine. Benny is frightened awake. Dark Wind scolds him for still being chained to the tree. It was never his intention for him to be chained for 5 years! He asks why he never used the key.

Benny smiles. He burrows a few inches into the soil and produces the key. “You mean this?” 

Benny explains that he has a new life thanks to the chain. That people like him next to the Cursed Tree. He has a purpose. He makes a difference. 

Dark Wind roars in anger. He berates the incompetent rabbit for learning nothing, seeing nothing and living inside his own whiskers. It was never the intention of the chain to imprison. It is the purpose of the chain to empower. He screams at the poor bunny that he has never seen any Shihine be more stubborn, self-hating and yet more powerful than Benny. Benny can do anything he wanted if he could only see… he would see that his destiny was for something wonderful…something that no one in the meadow had ever seen…

With that, Dark Shadow vanishes with a sonic boom that rattles the bark of the trees. Benny is left stunned. He is afraid. The idea of using the key begins to expand in his little bunny belly for the first time. It is like a ball of fire that cannot be stopped. The chain has been his friend for so long. Even Cursed Tree is his close friend. He looks up at the tree while holding the key in his paw. His sweet eyes gazing at his friend…”Why am I cowering in fear?” thinks Benny. His ears are folded back. “Why am I so afraid?”  Cursed Tree looks down on his frightened companion with sympathy. 

Then Benny, after using words all his life, begins to feel. He begins to use words.. but stops. His feelings take over. Sadness. Sadness of losing the life he’s created…his friend… his identity in the chain, the horrible callouses around his ankles, his pink color… All of it is him… yet all of it is false. For the first time in years, Benny feels. He feels the cost of his lack of vision. He projects his feelings toward Cursed Tree. Cursed Tree sends feelings of support back. 

Benny, overwhelmed, cries. He cries hard. He doesn’t want to leave what he knows. It is safe being shackled to Cursed Tree. But he also knows that he is not fulfilled. Not happy. Not really. And he realizes that no one is going to help him. Not a bear, not a fellow Shihine, no one. They don’t want to, because they are afraid too. They are afraid of what he might become. They can only create him as big as he can create himself. His little rabbit tears dissolve into the roots of Cursed Tree. And Cursed Tree begins to cry too. For the first time in 500 years. 

Only Cursed Tree is crying, because he knows something that Benny doesn’t. 

Benny has no faith. No vision for faith. 

He only has hope in a future he can be sure of. Cursed Tree knows that Benny’s worst fear is leaving the chain behind without having something “for sure” to go to. Cursed Tree would have used words to tell him that years ago, but Cursed Tree has no mouth. Cursed Tree could only be there for Benny silently. He so hopes now that Benny will see that the essence of faith is creating things hoped for in the future whether they materialize or not. His tears, now, are tears of hope and joy that Benny might see it for the first time.

Fifteen minutes pass. Benny is exhausted and spent. He looks at the pond that he has longed to drink from. He looks at the animals that are now drinking and frolicking happily. He looks at his shackles. He looks at the key still in his paw. He looks from one to the other. Strangely, he looks up into the tree canopy above him. It seems as though the sky is calling to him. He doesn’t know why. He’s never felt this way before…then again, he’s not felt in a long time. 

Something in him clicks…

Benny flips onto his side to expose the keyhole in his shackles. He bravely inserts the key into the hole and freezes. His little rabbit lower lip sticks out as another small tear falls onto his pink fur. He looks up at the tree… a giant wave of support feeling engulfs his little frame. He turns the key…

The shackles fall off with a double-clank and sheen of chain. Hairless bloodied rings of flesh are exposed from where the shackles were on his legs. Then, the pain..

Searing pain. 

The flesh exposed to air for the first time in 5 years. Benny writhes on the ground in agony at the unexpected sensation. He screams and wails as loud as his little rabbit voice can render. The meadow animals race to him to find out what the matter is…and when they see the shackles open, they know. They step back and give him their support without doing or saying anything. For there is nothing to be done. Only support. Benny has to face his pain, but he will not do it alone. 

When the agony subsides, Benny sees that he is surrounded by love. He is happy to see everyone supporting him. He starts to speak, but then catches himself. He sends his feelings of gratitude instead. They respond. Their powerful feelings enfold him in a way that he couldn’t receive before. 

In a flash, the fear comes on again as it had before. He is unhappy, things aren’t right, he’ll never fit in, who was he to be… His heart beats quickly… but he is not the young Shihine that he had been before. He marshalls his strength and thank the fear for protecting him…”but I’m choosing to see this another way.”

He rolls into a sitting position. He tests his free legs by hopping just a little bit. He hops a little more…and more… until he hops just farther than the chain has let him go in 5 years. It is ground his paws have not felt in an age. He turns and looks at Cursed Tree for approval… A huge wave of approval nearly knocks him down. 

With a smile and leap he races toward the pond. He can almost feel the cool water on his fur and the magical grass healing his legs… but there is something very wrong. The ground feels nearly textureless…the ground is moving down…the sky is lowering…

Then with a start, Benny realizes that he is flying through the air like bird. With each hop of his powerful legs, he  sails forty and fifty feet high. The animals saw it long before Benny recognized it. The wind whips through his whiskers. He can’t hold back his joy. He lets out an excited scream. His legs have become super powerful having jumped in chains for so long. He now propels himself into the air like a bird. Indeed, no one, not even the trees, had ever imagined such a thing. 

He leaps into the water and leaps out so high that it is like rain on the animals below. Everyone is amazed, and even the Bluhui birds are shocked. 

Benny is so elated, so fulfilled, so filled with joy that there is not even a memory of his life that was…only what is now…and what will be…

Naturally, all the animals want to know how to do it…how to fly! Benny, the smartest Shihine rabbit to ever live, within weeks, has now taught the animals how to “joy-jump.” Even the bears are flying around like giant bombardiers thundering when they land. By merely changing the context of the simplest of things, impossible flight becomes inevitable.

And so it is, that the living meadow of Silkwere is more joyous and exciting that it has ever been before, because of a little rabbit named Benny…who learned what faith was.