The Temple of the Rose
I’ve had an incredibly long week, and I’m tired. I won’t waste time and space here, explaining why, but feel free to research the hashtag #outcreatethehate. Hatred and bigotry landed in my backyard these past couple of weeks and standing in the face of them has been exhausting. I usually prefer offering up writings representing my work, where spiritual health intersects with emotional, mental, and overall health.
Instead, I’ve decided to write a piece of fiction.
Or is it?
I’ll leave that up to you.
~~~~~
I stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at the entrance at the top.
I was frightened as much as I was excited. I’d come so far for this; after so much searching, here was the answer I sought.
I began the trek up the temple's stairs, looking at the arched doorway at the top and seeing nothing but darkness within. Everything around me, from the thick canopy of trees behind the temple to the rolling ocean behind me, seemed to fall eerily silent.
I had arrived.
As I neared the top of the stairs, the smell of roses met me with a gentle greeting. Over the door, carved into the stone, was a single rose blossom. I could see nothing beyond the doorway's threshold, but I could smell roses as distinctly as I was walking through a rose garden.
I took a breath and crossed the threshold, walking into the arms of the love I’d heard so much about.
I’d been searching for so long. Searching for answers.
Searching for love.
What lay before me was nothing like I expected. From the outside, the temple clamored towards the sky with its beautiful architecture, almost as if it were anxious to free itself from the Earth, almost as if it was ready to take flight.
Inside, simple torches burned along the wall. Light danced along the walls, flickering with languid motions, illuminating what lay before me.
A simple statue.
I’ve heard all the legends. I’ve heard the tales of all the heroes who had made their journey here, and the treasures they’d brought back with them. I’ve heard about the transformations.
I’ve seen them personally. That’s why I was here.
What was I expecting? Perhaps a gigantic statue carved out of gold? Maybe throngs of worshippers who carried with them that sense of peace and salvation this place was so known for?
I hadn’t expected a statue just a little shorter than I was. I walked closer.
A woman, her eyes closed, her face peaceful. A hood was over her head, and simple robes flowed around her. She had no distinguishing features, yet her hands were raised to her chest in prayer. Behind her hands, a simple candle burned in the space where her heart should have been. Around her neck, a garland of roses.
This I was expecting. I knew the legends, having heard them throughout my childhood as my mother helped me find sleep with the stories her mother told her.
I knew what to do.
I walked up to the statue, not knowing what to expect, yet knowing what to do. The instructions were simple. When a person finds her, if they could find her, all they had to do was pull a single rose blossom from the garland around her neck, and eat it.
With a shaking hand and a trembling heart, I reached up and plucked a rose from the garland around her neck. It came free loosely.
I placed it in my mouth, hands still trembling, feeling the softness on my tongue. I chewed softly and with purpose. The taste was exactly what I expected, and while I loved the smell of roses, I wouldn’t say I loved the experience. I swallowed dryly.
As soon as I did, the eyes of the statue opened.
I gasped, and holding my breath, saw life envelope the statue. First, it began with her eyes, opening softly to gaze at me. Then, the rest of her flowed to life like water was pouring over her. The marble whiteness of the statue transformed into skin, right before my eyes, her cheeks flushing with the color of life first, then the rest of her.
A small smile played across her lips. Was I still holding my breath? I can’t remember.
“My child,” she said softly.
With that, I fell to her feet. Rivers I had cried over the course of my life, but as the tears sprang from my face, they weren’t tears of horror or pain.
They were tears of love. Of joy. Of release.
She placed a single hand on my shoulder, my head bowed as I was wracked with sobs. I’d traveled so long, so far, and suffered so much, just to get here. Her hand on my shoulder seemed to bring me back to myself. I could feel her subtle urge for me to stand, even without her saying any words.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she said to me. The love she radiated, the acceptance she seemed to broadcast from her very being, felt so large and massive to me as to feel alien. I’d experienced great love in my life, but nothing like this.
Nothing like this.
“Mother,” I said. I knew her by many names, yet no name seemed to fit her like that simple, elegant title. She was known by many names among all the nations of the world. So many names for so many nations, so many people, and all her children.
I stood before the Great Mother.
My childhood bedtime stories gave her a particular name, my mother naming her so as her mother had before her, yet her stories taught us she was known by many names. The stories my mother told me, especially that of the Golden Ass, gave her a particular name, yet we were taught she had many others.
Each of them meaning “Queen of Heaven.” Each of them meaning “Mother of All.”
Finally, after years of seeking her out, I stood before her. I felt her love, a love so massive it felt like I was standing next to the ocean itself.
“I know your pain, child.” Her words seemed to fill up the air around me, and, at the same time, seemed to emanate from my heart. I could feel her words outside of me and inside of me at the same time. I looked at the flame of her heart, still burning there in the cavity in her chest. Her hands were no longer in prayer formation, however.
Her hands held mine.
I came all this way, with a singular question in mind. This question was one that haunted me since childhood. A great war waged to the East, one massive empire invading another. Millions of people had died, and while I carried massive pain and turmoil, the world carried more.
So I asked her the question I came all this way to ask.
“How?”
She squinted her eyes slightly, tilting her head slightly to the side in response.
“How?” I asked. “I have known you my entire life. I’ve felt you, I’ve known and seen your miracles. You have answered when I called. I’ve seen your manifestations. I’ve seen your miracles.”
I took a breath and continued.
“How can I believe in you? How can I believe in your magic and your power? How can I believe in any higher power when a king like that exists?”
She knew the man I spoke of. He had oceans of blood on his hands. The question I asked her was the one that sought to reconcile her grace and strength with the horrors and atrocities of human war. A fair question, I thought, for any member of existence.
“How can I believe in you? How can I love you or any of the other higher powers of this world if a man like that can so indiscriminately kill millions?”
I’d like to think realization dawned in her eyes, yet I suspected she knew the question I would ask. I believe the realization in her eyes was the relief of knowing I could get the question off my chest and out of my heart.
“Why don’t you do anything about him?” I asked her finally.
She didn’t hesitate, yet she told me an answer I wasn’t expecting. I’m unsure if I expected an answer, but she had one for me, and almost immediately.
“I can’t do anything about that man,” she said, “because he’s stuck in his story.”
Silence passed between us as I sat momentarily with what she said.
She couldn’t do anything about him because he was stuck in his story. She continued.
“I can’t do anything about him, or his actions, because he’s stuck so firmly in his story. He is on both a religious war AND a war for resources,” she explained.
“To him,” she said, “the ends justify the means.”
She stopped, letting me digest what she told me. I was beginning to understand.
“From a very early age, the people around him taught life, and his country represented certain principles. From that early age, he was exposed to the most dangerous part of human existence,” she told me, pausing to breathe.
Do statues with candles in their chest, those that come to apparent life, take breaths?
This one did.
The Great Mother, the Queen of the Universe, the one who nourishes us all and gave us life, just told me she couldn’t do anything about one of the worst tyrants in human history.
All because he was stuck in his story.
This conundrum I was in, the one where I was trying to balance the belief in higher powers with the horrors of war and tyranny, was one I knew most of us in this world were in. It didn’t seem so much vague as it did a cop-out, and she must have sensed my dissatisfaction with her answer.
“My child,” she said. “That’s what you would know of as free will.”
Then it clicked for me. I’d been a voracious reader of human religions, taught that all spiritualities sprinkled across the globe each held a glimmer of truth. Despite their mythology or guiding principles, each religion spoke of both the danger and importance of free will.
She couldn’t reach this tyrant because she couldn’t get around his free will.
She squeezed my hands softly.
“The most dangerous part of your world is human belief,” she said gently. “No one is born into the world wanting to fly the flag of one nation over another; they’re simply taught it’s the proper thing to do. No one is born into this world wishing to worship a tyrant or despot, yet so many people come to do so.” She looked deeply into my eyes, her irises a swirling combination of galaxies and oceans.
“Most often, people are manipulated into unhealthy belief systems because they’re taught to be afraid.” Realization was slowly dawning on me. “Afraid of someone else, afraid of other empires or religions. Are those fears justified? Perhaps so. Should we ever be controlled by them?
“Never. Haven’t you seen the rivers of blood flow over this world because of human belief? Oh, the stories you all lose yourselves in. Born 5,000 years ago, you would not know the names of your saviors and tyrants. You would not cling so dearly to the gods and kings you’ve been taught to worship, and fear.
“5,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, if you were born in this world, you would only know Love.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have anything to say. My mind raced with the hordes of people carrying swords and torches, all twisted up into malicious knots because of the powerful, convincing words of a few who knew exactly what to say, and how to say it.
My heart grieved for those who would, time and again, lose their lives to corrupted beliefs.
Who would lose themselves.
She sensed this in me, as she raised my hands to her mouth and kissed them. The most radiant warmth poured from her and into me, my body filling with a calm, a peace like a golden sunrise.
“I know,” she said. “I feel the same pain. I do. I just hope you remember me in the midst of all your pain. As you watch your fellow humans suffer, I hope you can remember me and Love. I ask that you remember how I’ve never sought to be your tyrant.”
She stared deeply into my eyes. “For all that, would you make one promise to me?”
I paused. I never thought she’d ask something of me. What could I possibly do for a goddess?
“What can I do for you? You’ve only ever done so much for me.”
She smiled in appreciation, tipping her head again slowly to the side as if dismissing this notion of gratitude.
“So many people in this world lose themselves to belief systems. So many people get trapped in their stories, and they’ll waste their one precious life because of that. So please do me this?”
“Yes?” I asked her.
“Don’t get lost in yours.”