Prophets

Isaiah warned the people. Jeremiah warned the people. Ezekiel, Hosea, John the Baptist…they all tried to tell people to smarten up.

Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, “We will not walk in it.” Also I raised up sentinels for you: “Give heed to the sound of the trumpet!” But they said, “We will not give heed.” Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what will happen to them. Hear, O earth; I am going to bring disaster on this people, and fruit of their schemes, because they have not given heed to my words; and as for my teaching, they have rejected it. Jeremiah 6:16-19

But of course, people never do listen, do they? At least not enough of them. Everybody likes to think the warnings are for someone else, like their enemies. Surely not I, Lord. Right, Lord? Lord…are you there? Hellooo….??

We have prophets in our own time, and they go through the same head-banging experience of trying to wake people up. It’s a thankless fucking job. Les Vis wrote about it the other day, and Arthur Silber has been crying out in the wilderness for a long time, too. And I’ll vouch for what they’re saying because I go through it too, as do my friends in blogging, and frankly we’re all sick and tired of pushing rocks uphill. We are nobodies, and therefore, nobody listens to us.

The entire daily experience of reading the news, seeing what horrors happened while you slept and wondering what will transpire while you sit here trying to find a few words to post on your trusty little blog which will somehow, hope beyond hope, staunch the blood from gushing out of the many gaping wounds in the world…it’s just surreal. And I can’t help feeling that I stepped out of line to do this job because nobody important wants to do it, and yet it needs to be done. I can see that plain enough. It’s like I’m standing in front of a hospital, and I have no medical training, and bloodied people lie on the streets and lawns in front of me as far as the eye can see. But the highly trained doctors and nurses in the hospital don’t come outside to help us. They don’t bring the stretchers or the morphine or the tourniquets or anything. A few of them shout some instructions from a third story window. That’s about it. Otherwise, it’s too dangerous for them to come outside and help. Plus, they’re very busy inside doing breast implants and face lifts. So most of these people will die. I’ll do what I can, but I just don’t have the resources to save very many. I’d be thrilled to save even one soul.

That’s what Les Vis and Arthur Silber are talking about. This guy too. Where are the people who can help us? Why don’t they come out here and kneel on the bloody grass and tend to some of these victims? Some could still be saved, if only….if only people with the training and the equipment and the connections would get down here and do something. If only people cared less about their supposed safety and reputations and more about the truth.

I’ll be out here on the bloody grass waiting amid the dead and dying, where I belong, trying and failing to ease their suffering. I know that if the people inside don’t come out, the building will implode on them when they least expect it, and it will be over for them without warning, just like it was for the people in the twin towers. The people inside, protecting the establishment and profiting from it, will be sacrificed to serve the greater goals. The owners will collect an insurance payment, just like they did before. Whatever safety and protection these practitioners and patients think the building provides - that is an illusion. But they won’t listen. They never do, and I won’t miss them when they’re gone.

How can you say, “We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us,” when, in fact, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie? The wise shall be put to shame, they shall be dismayed and taken; since they have rejected the word of the Lord, what wisdom is in them? Jeremiah 8:8-9

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.