Dunkleosteus

Dunkleosteus by Jay

                The man kneels at the altar and begins mumbling words only coherent to him and what he believes to be something else.  For billions of people throughout time this something else has been as varied as the individual species of life that have come, lived and departed since the first cyanobacteria evolved nearly four billion years ago.  This kneeling individual has a certain way of thinking  --  a particular belief that is comforting and settling and makes his brief existence on this rotating and revolving geoid something worthwhile.  And so he kneels and either thinks, speaks or mumbles thoughts or words relative for his comfort.  To him, the world is a pat place and has a formula perfectly suited to put his willing mind at ease.  There is a separation between what he deems good and what he deems bad, and he is confident that in the long run, the good will eventually prevail even if it does not claim victory until after his passing.  He is secure in the knowledge that everything will turn out all right in the end, and his existence, though filled with numerous trials and tribulations, will eventually settle within an eternity of peace.  He is also confident that he will see his love ones who have preceded him to Eden and will in turn most certainly be present to welcome those who will come after.  

There are many who enviously wish that they could kneel beside this man and share his simple optimism.  How wonderful would it be for those to experience his unbounded faith and restful peace of mind!  Perhaps not too far away there is another man.  Perhaps he is sitting on a park bench feeding the pigeons and watching the clouds drifting lazily through the towering trees around him.  He too has dreams, but they are different.  He is thinking of a remote time in Earth’s geologic past  --  375 million years ago.  He is in a dark period where the first amphibians have just crawled out of the sea and on to land  --  a world where virgin forests welcomed those that wished to break from the watery nightmare that was the Devonian ocean.  He descends through the water column where at first he sees nothing but a light green and then, as he drops further and further down, a darker green.  There is nothing good about this scene.  It is too mysterious.  There seems to be nothing here except what could surprise you, and that what is not good.  It’s unnerving, and the man, who is simply in a dream, cannot shake the fact that something is about to happen.  There is no Eden in this world.  Even the thought of Eden does not exist.  There is only a hunger.  The man can feel it.  It is all around him though it might be miles away.  It is near, and it is coming, and there is nothing he can do to escape the vulnerability and the harrowing fear which he is now experiencing. 

Suddenly, he sees it!

It is a school of fish, large in itself, as if he were staring at an underwater tornado.  Thousands of them all together  --  a top spinning and swaying and elegantly swinging this way and that…

But there!

A dark mass has just scattered the dancing column, and as it moves forward, the man can do nothing except gape in a petrified state.  Fear is a word that is too mild when witnessing the monster that has now sighted him.  Thirty feet long and covered in what looks like an armored coat  --  lacking teeth, but a steel cage for a jaw  --  mouth open  --  a living guillotine  --  wide, dementedly determined eyes  --  nothing there  --  nothing at all except  a soulless sparkle… 

And the man wonders… 

How on earth could Jesus possibly explain this? 

Why???...

 

The End