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The Machine in the Desert

Simple Simon deep down knew
that he thought a bit askew
many were the folk who said
that he rumbled in his head.

But Simple Moggy following through
launched upon the Quest anew
because he longed – with puny might
to one day walk full in the Light.

I'd been walking through the desert for what seemed an awful long time.
Days, weeks, even years.
It had been hot during the days, astonishingly cold at night, barren, often lonely, and yet, at the same time, fascinating.
The fascinating part was the Quest. The searching. The pondering of a Great Unknown, that I, (admittedly a Simple Bear), strongly felt… was calling me. To seek out Answers. To cross over the next horizon. Again, and again. Patiently, stubbornly, trudging ever onward.

Well, one day, to my surprise, I came across this HUGE thing, in the desert. I couldn't really describe it properly. You might think it was a machine, with pistons and valves, camshafts and bearings, flowing oil and sizzling steam. Except it was much, much more complicated than that.  I started to walk around it, and soon realized it would take me days. It was THAT big. It was also tall. It stretched all the way up to the sky. Every so often I'd come across groups of people, huddled together, discussing how the Thing worked. Or was supposed to work.
They never took any notice of someone as simple as me, so I would just quietly listen in for a while.
A few things then started to register with me.
Firstly, they were always convinced that the tiny part of the machine they were bent over, and studying & arguing about, was THE most important part. In other words, if you didn't understand THAT infinitesimal part utterly and implicitly, well, you were seriously failing. Doomed, even.  But why, I wondered? With a machine-thing that MASSIVE, who was to say which tiny bit was the be-all and the end-all?  But then, maybe that was just me. Simpleton, like.
Secondly, some of the stuff they were arguing about baffled me. For instance, there was a big dispute about what the machine-system-thing's NAME was. People were quite worked up about it.  As for me, I was so busy admiring it, and breathlessly trying to follow how it all worked, that it's precise name didn't really bother me.
Thirdly, I'd come across people who were busy (loudly) (and often pompously) telling small groups of devoted followers EXACTLY how everything worked. Well, you know, me being me, I'd just kind of look up at this thing, stretching up all the way to the sky above, and I'd just kind of giggle stupidly to myself. How in heaven's name anybody could presume to understand a system as huge as that… Oh, well.

That was a long time ago now. I'm getting old now, and, guess what, I'm STILL trudging my way around that fascinating system-thing.
I love it. Love the journey, too. I say my simple prayers, fill my little heart with gratitude, and look back happily on the tiny bits I've sort of, kind of, learned to (maybe) understand just a little bit. And then I look forward to figuring out everything else I've only scraped the surface of.

But, at least I figured the manufacturer's name out. I think. I found it in an old book. It said, very simply:

“In the beginning, God…”

Francis Meyrick

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Last edited by Francis Meyrick on November 15, 2019, 2:49 pm