After the end of Ys, Gratillonius asks:
"'Mithras, where were You when Ocean brought down Ys and her Queens, where were You when it tore Dahut from my hand?'" (p. 44)
Where was any God when all that happened? There were Christians as well as pagans and Mithraists in Ys.
Gratillonius' reflections continue:
"He knew the question was empty. A true God, the true God was wholly beyond." (ibid.)
Thus he approaches the concept of a deity too transcendent to respond to prayers. But then:
"Unless none existed, only the void. But to admit that would be to give up his hold on everything he had ever loved." (ibid.)
It would not. Human beings and their organized societies would still exist. If, beyond them, there is a void, then that is a good place to meditate. Ultimate reality is called "the clear light of the void" in some Buddhist traditions and there is an sf novel called Children Of The Void. Let's go with the void.
Next, Gratillonius' daughter, Nemeta, adjusts.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Unfortunately, humans being they are, flawed and imperfect, we cannot always escape the bad or catastrophic consequences of disastrous or foolish decisions or acts.
No, Christians believe God does respond to prayers--but in His own way and by means we cannot know. Sometimes very overtly, as in the miraculous cures sometimes granted at Lourdes.
And that "Void" is a dead end and is not what God desires for us.
Ys should have been rebuilt further up and inland about 500 years before, to approximately where the Wood and Lodge of the King was--to heck with what the "gods" of Ys wanted!
Ad astra! Sean
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