This madness of believing

Flannel soldiers, maple sugar zealots, white berets, caps against a wall, a meteorite, sometimes, would crush you that your callous waters would not form any lava, your bone tubing no coal, let alone a diamond.

Your zealot’s tongues do not water any soil, dry as you are. Where is hidden this soul that your burning bushes promised you? Did they really promise it to you or didn’t you just dream it?

I don’t understand these certainties made of cardboard, even marshmallow. I’m surprised at your gossip faith. How dare you believe these road maps rewritten over old delusions that all promised paradise? You cling, faithful, to something that escapes you, transcends you, and because you are ignorant, you shout even louder to hush this silence that would break through the most opaque of eardrums.

When you mingle with the love of your species, you are forgiven for your regimental coquetries, but when your only actions are to mix the blood of your neighbors with your land, when you misinterpret the true nature of women’s sex or the candid impulses of the heart, you have only one desire, that of binding your words behind your back.

There are battles, of course, that science exposes every day. There are sufferings, injustices that only seem to exist to justify an absurd reality. The scientists reveal to us the immense arms of Shiva-Nataraja who, since a spark of reason ignites our brains, smiles at us with her smeared lips and her neutral gaze of implacable violence.

A comet, I tell you, a black hole, a bouillabaisse of supernovæ, repeated disasters hang from your nose and you pretend to affirm that your gods are unalterable powers, that your paradise, your celestial virgins haunt your logic and that only you possess the answer, the key, the jackpot to the Lord. You think you understand the Infinite because enlightened or madmen have opened their souls before you by gouging their eyes out. It’s certainly impressive, but it’s only blood.

And what do you really think the Universe does with us? Does it have a word, to begin with? Did he honestly admonish you once? Doesn’t it simply move atoms in its immeasurable complexity? What do you have to worry about what I do with my ass when the selfishness of Men has been raping the Earth and the Oceans for ages?

You listen to nothing, you chant, anguished, agitated, upset, you bend from holy pains, you anesthetize yourself with promises that are more vague or playful than others. You are no more valuable than atheists, suffering from agnosia, who have the reflex of invoking common sense.

I hear you calling me Job, snubbing me, defending my inaction and my lack of courage, that my injustices are well worth yours. I will not argue with you. I only ask you to look at the battlefields of history and the present, to hear and notice above all that human goodness is not clothed in anything, that it is naked like desires, that it is in its serene patience the only answer worthy of being qualified as divine.

I’m asking you for nothing more than to love each other and make peace. The world is a jungle, the harsh theatre of a Darwinian balance and it is only hand in hand, heart against heart, joy for joy that we will achieve calm, happiness, this one and powerful balance.

Stop fighting for a piece of fabric or charms. Show politicians that your zeal for life will not tolerate any rules. But you must also give up arms and weapons yourself. You are no longer children. Have the candor of an adult and present a dancing look! Innocence can only be lived in full knowledge of the facts, without naivety and childish dreams. Turn to the road travelled, this road of trial and error. Dance! Dance! Especially when you cry. Your body knows much more about existence than your books declared holy by people we can’t remember who. Evolution on Earth has shaped you as you are, intelligent, bold, anxious, pretentious, creative and noble.

Do not be afraid of God, leave him to his evangelical silence. Mock the minarets, shave the bell towers, tear down the walls, stop these laments, make a clean slate of your childhood. Remember, of course, don’t forget this long road, sometimes dirty, sometimes clean like a chimera, but don’t stop walking.

A meteor? It will come one day. As with peace, when it arrives on Earth, we will certainly be dead, my brothers and sisters. But don’t you see the love that already binds me to you?