Page 14 - Introducing The Gratitudes

14 There was nothing arbitrary about the things people were asked
INTRODUCING
THE GRATITUDES
Field Guides to Learning and Living Everyday Values
to believe, including the fact that the world itself was created at 10 am on October 13th in the year 4004 BC. That could be ex- plained, and was, quite lucidly, to the satisfaction of anyone. So could the fact that 10,000 angels could dance on the head of a pin. It made absolutely good sense, if you believed that the Bible is the revealed word of God and that the universe is populated with an- gels. The medieval world was mysterious and filled with wonder, but it was not without a sense of order. Ordinary men and women might not clearly grasp how the sometimes harsh and unforgiv- ing realities of their lives fit into the grand and benevolent design, but they had no doubt that there was such a design, and the priests, their spiritual guardians, were well able, by deduction from a handful of principles, to make a system of virtues and values from which they could conduct good, if not righteous, lives.
The situation we are presently in is much different. It’s sadder, more confusing, more depressing, and certainly a lot more mys- terious. There is no understandable, integrated conception of the world which serves as the foundation on which an edifice of be- lief can rest, and on which we can build a solid basis of values. And therefore, in a sense, we are more naive than those of the Mid-
dle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything. And when that hap- pens it’s not long before we are bereft of spirit, and therefore, we are be- reft of hope. And being that hope is the juice of the future, we may very well be bereft of a future.
“I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom’s realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer’s Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot
embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and
am content.”
– Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague De Camp, and Lin Carter,
Conan of Cimmeria