Saint Patrick and The Goddess of Death

^^I do not own the above artwork.

''Cue the scenes of empty streets, stores, and intersections. Long overhead shots of a deserted downtown. Pan over to the trash blowing into the wind, over the Iowa river, and the empty university campus. Cut to a wide angle zoom shot of a decayed corpse alongside a dirty sewer drain...''

''That's it!'' I say aloud to my own genius. The few people in the coffee shop look up at me in disgust. The woman in her mid forties, caked on makeup, beret, and cigarette in hand, sits with mouth open as she couldn't even fathom someone breaking the silence of her own personal space.

Finally, after exactly 120 days, I have finished the first paragraph of my screenplay. The customers soon surround me, as I'm yelling and whooping it up for my achievement, and proceed to douse me in hand sanitizer and light me on fire. ''Fire is the final purifier'' says, former MSNBC war correspondent,  Brian Williams; flames licking up in the reflection of his gyeballs, as the laughter of the corporate toiletry demi gods, could be heard far off somewhere distant...but oh, so loud. 

What was that you ask? Would you really want to know? You've ever hyperventilated into a brown paper bag in the back of a Fairway? Apparently so, because our leaders suggest it, the CDC commands it, and the death squads enforce it. Selah.

28 Javes Later

Well, this is already getting old. Everything's closed and everyone split. St Paddies day, like everything else, has been traded in for fear. How'd it get like this?

You can blame a lot of things: the shadowy figures, the Illuminati, and Elizabeth Warren but I could personally hear the satanic laughing of the Zucc himself this last weekend. Who needs the media when your cousin is telling you that Uncle Jim John Jones is buying out Wal-Mart on Facebook Messenger? 

A garage full of hand sanitizer and enough toilet paper for his men, horses, the cockroaches in the basement, and the two thieves who'll have his entire family held hostage by gunpoint by the end of the month. What's next? Who knows? Dean Koontz and Facebook does.

Barely a week passes and we're already talking about martial law, 5 month quarantines, and drinking the Kool Aid.

I looked out at my parking lot tonight and saw only the empty lots...depressing, depressing, depressing. What else?

The Dual Natures 

“Our Generation has had no Great war, no Great Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.” - Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

This is exactly what I'm talking about. This fear, this insanity, this isolation. This is the invisible war, my doodes. Not the virus but actually Satan. Spray yourself down with Lysol all you want. I've spent so much trying to understand that I'm driving myself into the hysteria. Who cares about what the crazies are saying. What the kids are smoking. The true battle is spiritual. Our culture worships itself ,and more importantly, it's own death. This ''2012'' crap is what keeps the snakes fed...don't worry, Karen will be the provider and protector now.   

What we are facing is our own humanity. Our sin. Look what happens when the guy down the block starts coughing...for those struggling with the exegesis of my nonsense, our culture, the crowd mentality that says ''BUY THE TOILET PAPER, SWAMP THE STORES, BATHE IN THE HAND SOAP, BRING IN THE ARMY, QUARANTINE THE QUESTIONABLE, SEAL OFF THE CITIES, BURN DOWN THE HIGHWAYS, BINGE WATCH THE ENTIRE GUNSMOKE SERIES, PRODUCE LOCAL METH, etc...'', is the goddess that is worshiped. It's called that because it's not necessarily an ugly beast, the notions of basic survival seem like a human right when you look back at your kids and grandparents, but it quickly becomes this unquenchable blood lust that is never satisfied. That's sin.

As the ambiguous cop out, the missionary bishop, St Patrick, once banished all snakes from Ireland. Not much is known how or why. He just did. Modern scholars understand this folk tale as an analogy of  the spread of Christianity in Ireland; picturing Patrick as the figurehead that progressed the gospel in the little island. I truly hope that this crisis reveals the ''snakes'' in our time in a way that couldn't be denied. That the fear mongers of our time will be driven back into the deepest corners of the Sub-Reddits where they belong.  Either way:

   ''Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.'' 

- Matthew 10:28(NASB)

Saint Patrick himself said this:

The Lord is greater than all: I have said enough.