Monday, July 25, 2016

Sympathy for the Devil


Easily one of my favorite foods, any version of a taco bowl.  Like this one with brown rice and black beans, baby spinach and pico de gallo with lime as a dressing.  The tangy juice from the tomatoes saturates down into the rice for a tarty freshness.  Just a bit of sharp white cheddar and spiced ground turkey round it out for a complete meal.
Do you ever consider the devil?  As a side mental project this week, serving as a distraction from health matters, I'm loosely basing my pondering on the Antichrist.  The devil himself.  But as to make it manageable, I broke it down into considering the foundations of my understanding of him as child. Not as a general good versus evil concept but as an actual entity.  Just as with my understanding of math and science, my biblical Catholic teachings were not fully formed but I happily filled the gaps with my imagination along the way.  Surely we discussed the devil in class but mainly I recall speaking much more of hell, which I assumed was the Devil's home.  A fiery furnace that I could find myself in if I didn't mind my p's and q's.  But I remember being torn as there were also stories of his time as a strong powerful angel leader and one of God's favorites even.  He was cast down and fell from grace.  I just assumed it was at that time that he lost all his good looks.  That created a bizarre compassion and tenderness for him. In a way even a romanticism in my newly forming heart for the old goat as we were told he was once so beautiful and God adored him.  So in that sense, I even divided evil into two.  The ugly, mean, dark Lucifer who preys on the weak and takes delight in tricking you into following along with his hateful, vindictive work. And then the gorgeous angel man who seriously needed a hug after all he'd been through.  No doubt I would never want to run into him say walking home from school but I was pretty sure I saw glimpses of him in adults and kids having bad moments in my day to day. From what I knew to be true of people behaving badly so far was to acknowledge humans were very flawed and weak, sometimes seemingly not in control of their actions.  And after enough contemplation following a wrongdoing, I usually just felt sad for them. So I realize now that I certainly held fear as a young girl but also a defined sympathy for the devil.


The subject came up as someone mentioned the other day that the devil was tormented and it stuck with me all week.  What a concept.  What the hell is that asshole upset about, he's surely recruiting by the numbers.  I guess in my subconscious I always envision the devil to be quite happy in general. At least as his public persona. Someone who loved his work so to speak.  But the statement brought back thoughts of his inner pain and affliction, appealing to my small self.  Wait.  What the... No devil!...back!  Damn, he's good!!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone at home?