THE COMING SLAUGHTERHOUSE OF THE SOUL

: "The needs of the one sometimes outweigh the needs of the : many"

: Star Trek: The Search for Spock

*** Greetings,

I observe that occasionally an event such as that of Terri Schiavio comes along.

The event may not be unique, or perhaps, by reason of its profligate number and occurrence, is even mundane and worthy of little usual notice.

Nonetheless, certain disparate circumstances now and then combine to infuse the energy of a former mundane and common event with the supra-natural powers possessed of a spiritual and moral looking glass.

This pollination of the intangible by the physical, then becomes the medium where inescapable past, present, and future moral and social commentary is reflected back to us as a stark and un-buffered image. A photo negative of our true state of affairs, if you will, and a place where more than just the emperor has no clothes.

It becomes the mirror of Dorian Gray. Its powers are brutal, as only the powers of truth can be. It disabuses us of our spiritual complacency and the social comfort of our self deception. We are found wanting in its presence and remanded to a communal and private purgatory in which the only atonement is the unconditional acceptance of the unpleasant truths about not only our community of fellow man, but that of ourselves as well.

And...

Into this transubstantiated looking glass, even the most unwilling are obliged to peer.

As with the oracles of antiquity, one may divine a great deal from the duress of such a compulsory introspection. We may choose to learn or we may choose to not learn. We may see ourselves as others see us or we may deny the truth thrice before the dawn breaks.

But most terrifying of all, we may see in any such event, the end result that is our commonly constructed fate; a fate awaiting us in a place where the creation devours the creators, one and all, on the other side of the looking glass.

Today, as we look upon the dying face of Terri Schiavio, we are witness to an event that tells us much beyond the obvious of yet another disconnected life-support system.

In it we see ourselves as a People that no longer have the foundation of values upon which an enduring national dream may be built.

In it we see the undeniable end-logic and destination of a world where the spirit of Man is reduced to a factor of the equation instead of the totality of the sum.

In it we see the spiritual alienation that we affect to deny. We see the moral road that once led to Camelot, its distant zepher'd pennants beckoning to us from down a far path; a path from which we were once seduced, and that we will never walk again.

Our senses are indicted by the accusation of a verity that we have voided and deflowered the values and affirmations of the labor of two thousand years of social moral constructs, human history, cultural heritage, and the essence of salvation striven to be achieved by past generations of men and women.

And, in it we read, written in the blood of our fathers, that redemption of the venial is a worthy goal and that there is valor and virtue of enduring substance in the aspiration of attainment to the higher spiritual qualities of Man.

But most of all, in this looking glass, the rightly horrified viewer gazes into his own eyes, that, like two hollow coals of steel-cold fire, peer back at him.

And he comes to know therein, the eyes of his own executioner.

Hither he falls into the eternal damnation of his own looking glass, whilst thither about him scurry the demons of his blackest nightmares, methodically constructing the workings and mechanics necessary to contain the once and future inhabitants of the coming slaughterhouse of the soul.

-CliffMickelson