heathen and a holyman

heathen and a holyman

A Story by HeathenWithApen
"

A short passage I scrawled out in pen on my way back home, an adventure of sorts.

"

          I visited a city quite some east of mine this past weekend. In a city for which I do not belong to, I couldn’t help but feel at home by my drunken misadventure through the evening, and into the night. The human experience is a wondrous endeavor, and quite often we find ourselves losing track of purpose and meaning, but finding what we lack in bits and pieces, all a part of some peculiar, but immaculate circumstance.

          In waiting for the bar rush to begin, I sat down and shared a cigarette with an older, seemingly homeless man named Edward. This cigarette and casual conversation turned into a rather interesting exchange of stories, each of us trading pictures of our walk of life through words and humor. Edward had told me that he had been living in a shoddy boarding house of sorts on the north side, him and his established kin scraping by, trying to survive the bitterness of winter in an overcrowded home. I had told Edward that since moving out on my own back home, this winter was the first I had a home heated above twenty degrees, warm floors, and endless warm showers without worry, and that I understood the struggle in which he and his household are facing.

          A year prior, Edward had come close to death in a tent in the frost of January, coming to only to a passerby opening the zipper of his tent in search of inhabitants in the dead of night. In all of this, he had fully believed he had been in contact with God, and that god had sent the passerby as a sign that he was not meant to leave earth without fulfilling a purpose.

I had told him of the time I had come close to death, nearly bleeding out of a broken temple, and how I saw my own creator, which didn’t fit his imagery of god. He showed great interest in the same sense in how I explained the tryptamine spectrum, and how we as humans can reach a spiritual plain of thought and body through these chemicals that are produced in near every living, breathing organism. In his studies and my own, we both came to agree of Genisis 1:29, and the idea that every seed bearing plant on earth was created with purpose for humans, and that the tryptamines were produced to help us achieve spirituality.

Although we hadn’t shared the same creator, we are of the same kind. We shared goodwill, and preached for deeper education and recognition of spirit. The acceptance of karma as an energy, rather than a force. In said statement, surrounding yourself with good sentiment, and passing on goodwill, will in turn perhaps push the scales in your favor. In your time of need, those who you’ve helped might help you, or circumstance might favor you in comparison to those who do the polar opposite, and create injustice, dishonesty, and pain in others. The whole idea of leaving the world a better place than you came to. In spreading goodwill, you convert people to a better way of life, in which holds even in the most relentless of circumstance.

The two of us knew well enough that goodwill is a force that would never die out in entirety, and treated it as a sacred force. The same sense of a sacred force that had brought us to sit alongside each other, all in numbers and odds that I don’t have the capability or will to produce, which also explain the circumstances behind evolution, the big bang, earth being capable of sustaining life. We both laughed, and couldn’t explain it all. We both thought radios, cars, engines, and computers were whacky magic that our ancestors would s**t themselves over, and that the patron saints as well as Jesus walked among us to tell the world of a better way, even without the belief of god St. Paul spoke of love, and St. Boethius spoke of education and philosophy. We shared the same favorite patron saint, who had a house in which Edward studied some blocks over.

An hour or so into this endless conversation in which I didn’t wish to leave, I had gotten up to use the bathroom. In checking my pockets in a drunken rush, I had realized my wallet had gone missing. If so, both of my IDs, my bank card, social insurance, Medicare, essentially everything anybody would ever need to steal my identity, bank account, and soul, was gone. I’d panicked, but Edward had this sense that everything would work out. Not even a minute had passed, and I had recognized two undercover officers driving in an unmarked SUV, which I flagged down. The two of them had heard me out, and ran my name, and my wallet had been found and passed off to police some time earlier. They took some time to go and retrieve it, and in that time Edward had parted ways, and bid me farewell.

          Upon returning, the police had handed me my wallet, everything intact. I’d called my bank, and nothing was missing. Everything down to my emergency tab of acid I’ve hidden away for any near death experience to come was still there. In a city of near four hundred thousand, I wasn’t pickpocketed, and nobody had found my wallet, and tapped my account dry. The panic was for nothing, I had my way home back, as well as my identity. This still dumbfounds me, as there all the possibility that the one thing I sleep on at night was gone and I was screwed, but everything was fine. Perhaps karma had come back full circle. Something within it all was beyond me, some force which we should all hold sacred. I believe more in it all now. Two men of different spirits came closer to their own faith without judgment on this Saturday night, and in all, I’ve come closer to believing in the immaculate circumstance than anything else before.


       Edward, if by chance this comes your way, as we came each-others, keep spreading the better way.





© 2018 HeathenWithApen


My Review

Would you like to review this Story?
Login | Register




Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Request Read Request
Add to Library My Library
Subscribe Subscribe

Advertise Here
Want to advertise here? Get started for as little as $5

Stats

60 Views
Added on February 27, 2018
Last Updated on February 27, 2018
Tags: adventure, life lessons, religious

Author

HeathenWithApen
HeathenWithApen

somewhereland, Canada



About
Friendly neighborhood heathen. more..