The son of a preacherman (Taken from an earlier diary)

The Burning
I have mentioned The Burning many times in previous writings, I believe now would be a good time to explain it
After many months of sun and warmth comes the fog. It rolls in during the first three months of Latter Year, from the Sea of Despair and dissipates with the first snows. The coming of the fog drew anxiety out of the entire village. For with the fog comes the burning.
After spending so much time in the eternal gray and black of fog and night, the mind begins to change. Behaviors that would be frowned upon any other time of the year, begins to boil to the surface and people change.
Violence and rumor grow. Depression sets in and many in the village become reclusive, shutting themselves off from society. Still others embrace the darkness. Strange rituals and acts of polluted reason become ubiquitous.
In the year of ’78, the burning came early. Two months before it was expected, the fog rolled in from the Sea and many thought it to be a sign. At first the entire village did all it could to fend off the dusk, but as with all things, even a noble effort must break under the weight of inevitability.
It began as it always did. Small things, discourtesy towards minor offences moving into arguments and brawls. Faiths being tested and rumors of infidelity or acts of improper tastes in the opaque shadows of the day.
Anxiety spins to coveting, desire to greed, and desire to lust. It was in the third month of the Burning when gossip began to grow of a particularly fierce altercation at the edge of town. There were some who had said they had seen the Parsons wife cavorting with a deck hand from the docks.
The rumor went on to say that the Parson had known about the misdeed and confronted his wife. She promised to end the affair and had not. It was then that the Parson began to speak of the sins of mankind in his sermons.
One day the constable went out into the fog, to see the Parson about this rumor. After several hours the bell of the church rang and all went to find out why. The Parson sat at the alter as the constable told us the tale of this unfortunate day.
The Parson had gone into the village to pick up food for their dinner. Upon his return he found the deck hand and his wife together. The constable had gotten to the house in time to stop the Parson already involved in savagely beating the deck hand.
As is the law in the village, the deck hand and the Parsons wife were banished from the town. The constable reminded everyone in town that the same fate awaited anyone who would stoop to such vulgarity in his town. And we were all promptly dismissed.
I remember the Parson, barely spoke. He sat looking to the floor, wringing his hands sobbing slightly. I paid the behavior no more mind than he was a man who had been grievously wronged and was mourning his loss.
Everyone in town made their contrition to the Parson. Their sympathy and willingness to aid him in his time of need was made very clear to him. All he could do was spurn the generosity of his flock and beg to be alone.
The families of the guilty parties however, were not so kind to the man. The family of his wife blamed him for not educating her in the ways of proper Christian behavior. The family of the deck hand scorned the wife’s family for raising a harlot and the Parson for being remiss in his duties as a man of god and husband.
Soon the village began to fracture. Supporters of many views drew lines in the town. Friendships long and deep were abandoned. Bitter rivalries broke out as the village speculated on the veracity of the meager facts handed to them by the constable.
Soon stories began to blossom about the whereabouts of the pair. No one had heard a word, by print or wireless, from either since the banishment. Some said they would have been taken in by the other races, the less civilized of the valley. Some said they had befallen a far worse and Machiavellian fate. Others held to the faith that they were too ashamed of themselves to ever think of looking back to the village in any way.
The parson however, fell deeper into the burning. His sermons were of sin and vice and unrepented things that must be brought forth for god to forgive if anyone would stand a chance to save their eternal souls.
The overwhelming remorse of the Parson’s lamentation seemed to stabilize the village. The deeper into his own depression he sank, the more galvanized the village became in the desire to ease his suffering.
When he would walk the streets of the village, every kindness that could be paid to the man was showered upon him and to the surprise of everyone it seemed only to make things worse for him. With each gesture of benevolence the Parson nearly buckled in pain. It was as though his soul had soured.
On the last day anyone ever saw him, the snows of Latter Year had begun to fall. As strange as the Burning was that year, the snows were as well.
He had been shopping in the market when a young woman approached him to give him the gift of flowers. He stood staring at her and many thought he had broken the yoke of his own Burning. His eyes watered and his face twisted in rage. He stood shaking in the falling snow as he clenched his jaw.
A maddening howl leaped from his lips, the flowers thrown to the four winds he began to rant in the street. The Parson had finally gone mad. He bellowed passages from the Good Book and thrust his anger in all directions.
He begged for someone, anyone to explain to him the reason for the kindness poured upon a man who was after all, in fact, just a man. His tirade bent his body as unseen tormentors pulled at him from all sides.
He overturned carts in the street and threw stools through windows of the shops. He questioned our need for faith and disparaged those who had turned to him for confession of sins. He had thrust all the anger in him like cannon shot to anyone in his path.
I have walked among you for many years now. None of you have ever given me more than the slightest kindness in the streets. I the man charged with the cultivation of your souls given no more the time of day, than a vagabond in the streets!
You only come to me when your souls are burdened with the petty sins of your hopeless little lives. Tarnished with the little covets and orisons of desperation you have heaped upon yourselves.
Father forgive me! Father I am sorry! Father help me! Father, Father, Father! Had at anytime, even one of you seen me as I truly am, none of you would have given such stock to my recitations.
I am a man! That is all. A man in a black coat who speaks to you the profanation of our true father! I stand in front of you and preach the words that you wish to hear to make you feel better about all the sins you try so hard to hide.
All the little insects scrambling from the light of a god that does not exist! God was created by man! A small glimmer of hope in a futile and empty existence. The only thing that kept our fears outside our doors when man was only shaved apes playing with fire!
I am ashamed to know such a collection of cowards and lechers, bound by useless traditions and meaningless observances! You fear what you cannot control and your illusions of control have fallen into apathy by the will of your own ignorance!
Would any one of you come to my door of your own will, without provocation of circumstance or lecture to wash my sins from me? Would any of you know the words to speak? How could any of you truly know the ways of the god you created, when you turned your backs on him long before his son was killed by you?!
When his anger was spent he stood shivering in the snow, his breath jagged and raspy. The heat of his wrath melted the snow that fell upon him surrounding him in a fog. No on moved, no one spoke, they watched as he stood stock still in the street.
To hell with you all. He whispered as he walked out of town. It was the last words anyone ever heard from the man.
The day of worship came and went. We all sat for an hour waiting for the man and when he did not show, a small group went to his house as the rest stayed to sing from the hymnal and pray.
It was several hours before the group returned from the house and they were traumatized beyond comprehension from the scene they had stumbled upon
The Parson was found in his back yard, his shirt stripped from his chest and scourge marks on his back. He was frozen in a position of prayer, his eyes wide open frozen solid looking to the sky.
Not more than three feet from him the corps of his wife and the deck hand had been dug up from graves not far away. It was a ghastly sight of a man who had been wrestling with his fall from grace.
It was later discovered that the constable had found the Parson standing over them dripping with blood. The constable helped the Parson to bury the pair and cover the truth with the lie of banishment.
It seemed the Parson could not live with the consequence of his actions and had fallen into madness by the conflict of his vocation versus his quality. It seemed, after all, he was only a man, doomed to all the vile nature that humanity has festering within itself.
Not long after, the constable was found hanging from a tree in the center of town, and although it was clear who had done this deed, no one saw it as a dreadful article and was not pursued. In the end, it seemed that the Burning had finally ended.
The next year, a new constable diligent in his efforts, watched over our village. The new Parson spoke to the village with soft words and gentile overtones doing all he could to mend the scars of the village and bring peace. And as it was, the terror of the last year was swept under the fine finish of our civility.
In the years to come, when the fog rolled in and the Burning began creeping in on us, everyone seemed to be more wary of their actions. In the end the Parson’s words had reached us all. We would no longer give ourselves over totally to passions that governed us.

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