Flemish Proverbs III - Never believe someone who carries fire in one hand and water in the other (To be two-faced and to stir up trouble)

 

One sees monsters wherever he faces the modern man. How did one ever survive such things? The foundings of continents, plagues that wiped out entire nations or their better halves, war by stake and hanging, and which filled the remaining forests with the rot of a new species.

He is born with clay feet. He is born immaculate. He is born not so much as a species nor race, but as the parasite of the genera. Born against all laws of creation.

The gods could never have defeated the titans on their own, and especially not the giants. Only through overwhelming, through war with the elements, conscription of the heroic sons of the earth could the old laws be defeated.

Here we turn to the nomos of the heavens. And Christian man standing at the crossroads of time. He can only be defeated in a similar manner, by overwhelming, great subterfuge of the elements – but the weapons could not be the same. For the Christian man resists all violence and overwhelming. In place of the Gorgon Shield of the Greeks he stands naked before the impoverishment of the world, God's infinite pain. He stands in grace knowing that creation has fallen to surface wounds.

It is the inexorable fate of God that he be given time; time to wait, acquiesce with his ruin, for he knows that he is Law. "I am that I am."

And so too Job's war with the devil, it remains in the hidden, the waiting realms where faith cannot be. And with him, David against the giant, knowing that such beasts may never be defeated – it is his gaze which must first be corrupted by modern man, but this does not happen by the hand of the artist.

To see through the eyes of ruin, to impel evil as one of the laws of creation - equal in the nomos, which is forever One - is to be guided by justice where poverty descends upon dominion. For even glory will fall, and the righteous be cast out. There is rebellion even amidst angels.

To give ruin is its own type of sacrifice. One must be raised up before his final destruction. Thus God carries his death in his one hand, and waiting in the other. Loyalty as a mysterious power over faith.

And even the dissenters and denouncers are of grace and loyalty, or will play their part from the shadows. The man of God may no longer step out from the inner light, bringing peace to the world. He too must carry death in his hand.

And it is this that marks the sacred wars. A monstrous carrying, of which no one knows the weapons until they are thrown – cast out.

"God is dead." Yes. Yes indeed. And so the truest of weapons are carried silently.