Get ready, folks. You think I've gone out on a limb _before_, wait 'til
you get a load of this. Far as I can tell, I'm standing on naught but
chlorophyll and twigs - no limbs whatsoever. But maybe you can get
something
from it? Either way, Happy New Year. :-)

"Divine Love"


Divine love as I've come to understand it is an almost unexpectedly
rational thing. We think of the feelings we have for each other, and in
most
cases it's hard to come up with a relationship anyone might be able to
call
"divine". But consider our relationship to our pets. While these
relationships
mean one thing to us, on -their- end of things I couldn't help but to
think that
the affection we show for them is precisely what characters from tales of
old
often claimed to feel from gods and angels and such. Today, we know the
other
animals aren't as "talented" as us, we know they can't do many of the
things we
do - and they know it, too. Yet in spite of the fact that we could turn
them
into food right on the spot, we don't, and we in fact give them food. We
love
them. Or some of us do, at least.

Is that not the very essence of all religious truth? It seems to me the
soul, the core of what we've been trying to accomplish all this time even
though
we were unable to adequately put it into words. When we show affection
and
kindness to an animal that is less socially complex than ourselves, that
conveys
so many messages that it's impossible to find an appropriate point to even
-begin- explaining it. While I don't know for certain how well other
animals
can pick up on these things, some of them I'm sure would simply -have- to
recognize that we are more powerful than they, that we could seriously
hurt them
at any point we chose and that there would be nothing they could do about
it.
That we didn't do that might in their minds be testimony to our "divine
mercy",
or "righteous understanding"...

Divine love is praying for miracles, but not for yourself. Divine love
is showing true affection to somebody no matter what their nature may have
driven them to do. Hitler, for instance - I know what he did and how
devastating his actions were to millions of people, and the negative
impact they
continue having to this very day. Divine love would understand that
Hitler is
only human, and that humans sometimes make very bad decisions which, given
our
level of influence upon the world that surrounds us, can lead to rather
catastrophic consequences. Like when you have two cats and one of them
kills
the other one's kittens for reasons you don't really understand. Some of
us
would go on to permanently remove the offending creature from our midst,
but
some of us would just not understand it and move on - continuing to love
and
care for the cat. Some of us understand that cats will do what cats will
do and
we just stay out of their way while they do it.

This is the Garden of Eden. We are the gods walking through the Garden
of Eden with the very next "Adam and Eve" already beginning to emerge via
some
other species' evolution. We haven't perfected our world yet, but we have
the
potential to do so. And perhaps some day, we will. Imagine if we were to
reach
that point just as some other species began to acquire the knowledge of
grammar.
What do you think we'd do? Upon attaining a sufficient level of
communication
for the concepts to be understood, we would have to lay down the law with
that
species as far as how it communicates and interacts with us. There would
be
places it would be forbidden to go, and objects which it lacks the
potential to
understand. There would be forces utilized by us which if utilized by
them
often ends disastrously for them. We may even require a certain amount of
subservience from them in order to keep their animalistic nature in check.
We
would establish rituals of communication and interaction - to us, they
would
simply be to help keep things nice and orderly. To them, they quite
possibly
could be those "mysterious ways" people often bandy about when trying to
explain
the inexplicable. The rituals become ceremonial and are viewed with a
slightly
different meaning by us and by them - we see it as a scheduled meeting,
they see
it as a divine ceremony. We tell them to bury their feces in order to
promote
cleaner conditions and they hear it as a mandate that "non-buried feces =
'evil'".

It just all makes so much sense when seen in that light. Each and every
single
reported interaction between gods and men throughout ancient history - if
there
be even just a grain of truth to any one of them, it would almost all but
demand
that a scenario such as this be the case. Do you suppose that once upon a
time,
a long, long time ago, humans were number 2 on the food chain and we
served as
pets to some other being? I know - "Where is the indication that it is
so?"
There is non that I'm aware of, but that could have a very simple
explanation.

When our species began embarking on the path of grammar and technological
development, that would have been the tasting of the previously "forbidden
fruit". A more complex species would have no idea how we might make use
of the
trait of technology, but anything more sophisticated than ourselves would
likely
be more than glad to just step back and let nature take its course - let
the
chips fall where they may. It's what a more enlightened humanity would
probably
do if some other species on Earth -did- begin to develop the power of
speech and
technology - we'd remove our presence and stay out of their way, letting
them
fight it out amongst themselves so that they may thrive or fail on the
merits of
their own nature. To do that truly well, we'd have to remove pretty much
everything that might give some individuals advantages over the other -
let them
find their own tools to use against each other, leave ours out of the
whole
mess. Some groups of humans might clash with other groups of humans on
how to
handle the upstart sapient, which would of course be a battle amongst the
gods -
but eventually we'd arrive at a consensus and embark upon our plotted
course.

_That_ would be why we don't see anybody "out there" - they're just trying
to
stay out of the way while we choose our own fate. _That_ would be why
they
don't pay us a visit any more - they'd be letting us become what we are,
succeed
or fail.

That would explain so well many facets of religion and tradition as it
began to
emerge among humans. Just a quick foray into such things and our entire
species
would quickly begin to embark upon the trail that leads us to where we are
today.

Of course, still missing would be evidence of those more complex beings
who at
one time may have interacted with us. I've given one possible reason they
might
choose to remain in hiding from us, but then even if they chose to reveal
themselves - would we be ready to face them if they were to show up on our
doorstep today?