They began arguing together. “If we say ‘divine,’ he will say ‘Why then didn’t you believe him?’
stuck in heaven
we find it unable
to travel anywhere elseits authority unto itself
blinds it too narrowly
to tough evolving lifeheavenly speculation
shakes loose of gravity
and authority to effect affectshalfway to heaven
is the locus of miracles
revealer of a next surprise
No more needs to be said than, “They argued.” No matter what the rationale for choosing either side of the question, when folks are caught in might makes right—my right will demand your loss. A result is a losing attempt to come up with the perfect response that will brook no comeback and reset the stasis of the system.
This argument is exactly the goal of direct action oriented civil disobedience. This is what guerilla theater aims to do—create a cognitive dissonance that is fertile soil for a next seed.
The sign of the effectiveness of reframing the question from the particular tactic used to the underlying assessment of the situation is an over-thinking and making-up imagined comebacks that keep a rigid system on high alert and edgily unsettled.
What started as an accusation about the specifics of a parade without a permit and a riotous moment of breaking store windows has become the quicksand of a very pointedly sharp dilemma.
The moral underpinnings of religious authorities that seemed so clear at the beginning have turned into quicksand. The more struggle, the more deeply mired. They were so quick to accuse and now can do no more than whine. This is the binary nature of authority so bold when it can get away with it and so weepy when caught out saying more than it can ever know. Noting a cycle of accuse and whine is one way to assess the presence of a fragilely built doctrinal system where, if one peg is pulled out, the whole attempt falls apart.
Once the question has been asked and accepted, the whole game is over.
It turns out that a parabolic, ironic, relational understanding of life is far more robust than one based on hierarchy, rules, and authority.