The field does not look the same as it did this morning. This morning, it was peaceful and orderly, with waiving grasses across small rolling hills. The sun came up from the east across the orderly lines, in glittering gold and ovals of wood. The horses were restive, bursting with energy for the day to come.I have lived to see the field changed.
I have lived.
I am alive.
As I look across the filed now, it is covered in the dead and the dying. My armor lies on the ground, my shield and my spear are lost. My clothes were covered in the blood of my kin and kind, and I have thrown them away. Everything that was not me is gone, stripped away by the fire and the sword, by the pain and the fear.
It was not at all what I thought it would be.
I see those that carried the day, as they walk among the dead, theirs and ours. There is a kinship with them, but I cannot go to them. We are forever united and forever separated. Some are crying, some are working, some are dying.
I feel purified, transformed, cast in a new light and cleansed of what I brought here this day. I feel a temper within me that could only come from the deepest and hottest part of the flame. I feel like the sword tempered and beaten to a clean cut edge, beautiful both in its layers and in its simplicity. Honed and polished I now am.
In the battle of the moment, I am vanquished. In the battle within I stand victorious.
I will go from this field anew. The field will return, it will once again flow with grasses and grain. The field will forget this day, but I will not, for I have been born again upon this field. The simplicity of what it was has become a part of me… I am leaving the chaos and fear I brought behind, among this mud and these bodies, to be healed and renewed by time.
I am transformed. I am alive. By the Gods, I am alive.
My reflection in story upon Rodin’s “The Age of Bronze — The Vanquished”, for a course in Aesthetics at Meadville Lombard Theological School.
Yours in Faith,
David
I want to say thanks for this item it really re-new my faith if God.
Wassail.