Thursday, January 15, 2004
THE BURNT OUT OF HEART
Few people ever knew him as Maximus. Fewer still ever called him Max. But then, that was the arrangement with the Wayfarer. Not that Max ever troubled himself too much with the anonymity.
For, to Max, getting the Wayfarer into blog country had become a recent obsession: one for which he would, and could, pay the price of anonymity.
The Wayfarer had insisted that Max had yet to master the virtue of humility - and Max knew he was right. And humility was just one in a long line of virtues that he had to incorporate still. There was contentment, Max knew, as there was patience and perseverence. And of course, there was restraint in anger: all virtues that he had yet to imbibe in any required measure.
How could one not hate one's enemy? Max had wondered not so long ago. How could one ever forget the bitterness which humiliation wrecks upon one's soul? How could he ever learn to forgive the one who is the cause of that humiliation? But the Wayfarer had told him otherwise.
The Wayfarer had reminded him - with that inimitable style, that self-same symphony that had compelled Max through all his mature years - that the hater lives with a volcano within. A smoking cauldron of hate that blinds his reddened eyes to the realities of life; that contaminates the mind, that takes away the smile from his face unless, of course, it is the smile of twisted lips emitting fumes that scorch and burn. The Wayfarer had stressed that the hater required not imitation, but sympathy.
How the Wayfarer moved Max then with that unforgettable description of the best among mankind: 'Every believer who is burnt out of heart and truthful of the tongue'. Did Max then question him of the expression 'burnt out of heart', for he was sure of the 'truthful of the tongue'? It seemed so long ago to him. But who are the 'burnt out of heart'? Max remembers the Wayfarer's quiet voice as he echoed centuries of prophetic wisdom in his reply: 'The fearful (of God), the clean: one in which there is no hatred, no deception, no injustice and no envy.'
How many centuries did that hark back to? Was it to the cradle of civilization? Was it to the blinding glare that rebounded off the burning sands of Arabia? Was it a voice crying in the wilderness of more than fourteen centuries past? Max was almost sure.
Yes, Max decided, the Wayfarer in blog country would be worth the try. Worth having the story told. Not one, but two: the intertwined two.
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