The warrior poet emerges from the corridor of time.
In his hands he carries a sword and shield for the war that will inevitably come to him. For what else was he formed? The truth of all existence is revealed in his blood, his bones, in his mind seeking the corners of the universe, and he wishes to step into the modern age and offer the key that unlocks all doors: love. Pulled from the deep wells in the heart of God, love, carried to the mouths of those who long for living water.
The eternal man always arrives at the same conclusion, the same solution, and spends the remainder of his days on earth telling the truth. A simple thing. To offer what he has been given to those around him. The image. Born with the first word, still carried by all. Though who can see? Who has the eyes to see who they truly are? Who has the memory of what happened a hundred million years ago?
He will tell them.
But standing in the doorway to this modern age is she who decides who is allowed to enter and who must be turned away. And with a slight smile she waits for him to arrive, clipboard in hand, mask on her face, lanyard around her neck, waiting with the lines she rehearses like an actor in a play.
Before the warrior poet passes through, she must know that he will obey, as she has been forced to obey and now he must, and you must. You must. All must obey. To disobey is to put everyone at risk. The narrative says so, and she is the keeper of the narrative–the narrative that blinds men from seeing beyond their feet, look down, look down, ask no questions about where you are going or who is leading you there. Ask no questions about the cage being built around you. She, the keeper of the narrative, holding power for the first time on behalf of those who have always sought power over the individual. And this power she will exert. She will enforce. All who wish to enter the world she controls will do as she says, or they will be turned away.
But she isn’t just in the doorway.
She is in the dropoff line at school.
She walks the aisles of the airplane.
She hunts people down in the store.
She holds her finger over the microphone switch at a school board meeting.
She patrols the office.
She makes sure. She double checks. She is just following the rules. She doesn’t like it any more than you.
But she does.
She likes the rules more than everyone, because the rules give her power, just as the lanyard and clipboard and the nametag give her power. Together they make her into a force, hold the narrative together at all costs, don’t let it slip. Those were the instructions she received, maintain the illusion, keep men looking down at their feet, for if they lift their eyes and behold the horizon they will remember that they are eternal, not men of today, not men of nothing, not bugs to be smashed underfoot, but men who bear the image of the Creator.
Eternal.
And in this nature is true power, power that requires no lanyard, no clipboard, no narrative for the truth is its own thing and needs no narrative to uphold it.
The question she must answer is who is obedient to the narrative and who isn’t.
And as the warrior poet approaches, she clears her throat and asks for his papers, his mask, his vaccination card.
He ignores her and keeps going.
Ignore them.
Whatever they say, ignore them.
Do not be unkind, do not be cruel. Simply ignore them. Their power is dependent on your recognition of it.