I Met Death

I met Death on a hill one day, we exchanged some pleasantries. She stood, back to the sun, smiling down at me. I asked if I were to die today, she said 'Follow me'.

She walked down the hill, and to a path, bright and full of day. Flowers blooming, birds chirping, and children out to play. Down the path she led me still, to older people eating their fill, to babes in mothers' arms gurgling and crooning to get their way. Fathers sitting with families in their homes eating dinner, smiling at crayon drawings on the walls. Looking through me as though I was not there, though if I were not there, then I do not know where I was at all.

Further down, she led me, to a cove among the trees. And there, sitting on a throne of wood, sat a man, till he stood, and turned into a girl of no more than 7, then to a crone of what must have been 111. And in 3 voices this thing told me, 'Child, you have not died, you will wake up warm and alive, in your bed, at home, with another day of school to dread. But child, you have asked a question. Many do not dare ask, giving in to conformity, which is, alas, the only sign of humanity, which we see today. You asked if there was a god, or a goddess, or a divine at all. Many would tell you to go to church, or synagogue. But that I will not tell you, but I will tell you one thing, I am as real as you choose to make me, and as imaginary as well.'

'Who are you?' I asked quietly.

'I am one of many names, all are valid, in their time and place. Currently, many know me, as Yahweh, or Jesus Christ. Though that is simply the male facet of me. In other times, I was known as Artemis, Diana, Venus, Mary, and many other things.'

'Why am I here?' I asked more boldly.

The God-Goddess sighed and knelt down, picking up a leaf, he turned away from me and when turning back, became a simple figure that reminded me of my grandmother, ever-youthful, but ever-wise. She showed the leaf to me, where it had once been green, was only brown, dead. And sighing once again she told me.
'Soon this world, will not be, families live in only poverty, church means nothing at all, and immorality has covered this world. I am asking the young, the truthful, the thinking, to stop this.'

'Why me?' I asked uncertainly.

'You think, you care, you don't think only of your hair or who is going out with whom. You wonder of tomorrow, you remember yesterday, when the world was simpler, and you did not have these awful things that happen everyday.
When humanity was first here, there was no murder, or rape, and there was no thievery. There was only survival, a community, Socialism at its best.
When humans began to have an ego, to think beyond the next kill, literature began, and entertainment, and slowly things stopped mattering. In the last ½ a million years, the human society hasn't advanced. You are now only over-glorified monkeys making toys so you may be lazier.' The goddess stopped and looked at me, me biting my lip, trying to make sense of this awful trip. What had once been lovely and caring was now cruel and bitter. This goddess-thing took a breath and began speaking again.

'Over the years, Religion and Science have been at war. Finally science has won, but now your "progress" will kill you all. Children will not live beyond 30 because of this awful place. This was once a beautiful planet. Now it may as well be destroyed once again. I will give you a century. You and your descendants will stop this or I will start from starch, and that silly story about Noah and the arc will be true, except that there will be no arc.'

I bit my lip and bobbed a curtsey. Turning up the path, I left this Summerland of happiness and returned to my Winterworld, my world of pain and hate, which I must change.

And that is why I ask you to be nice to everyone, to never be cruel, to remain honest, to love and never hate, to put differences aside and become a community. I beg of thee, don't turn into what we most hate. I beg of thee, remain innocent and true and never lose your trust. For if we do not trust ourselves, who have we to trust?