I Am The Red Dragon

The other day I returned to Church again. I had moved away to a different place, where nobody knew my face, let alone my name. I went back to Church as playing the songs “Take Me To Church” by Hozier and “Oh Happy Day” by The Edwin Hawkins Singers are great and fulfilling, but my soul needs more substance. I remember in the dream about the Glass Lake, the God’s Eye when my parents’ words echoed to me from across the waters. “You need to learn to ask for help.” When they had visited me they had told me about my needing to find a place of worship. My father told me about needing to learn to find a place of worship especially. For he remembered when I had asked him about how do I go about saving my soul?

So, I went. I was aided in the first two returns to a place of worship. I had family with me. Not them, but someone else. I was accompanied. While we sat there, while we sat in Church I felt venomful, antagonistic. I felt like this wasn’t a Church. I felt that the happiness and worship the people were giving off were overly enthusiastic. It felt fake.

One might say that I’m not a believer, that my faith is not strong enough. So be it. Let them think what they desire to think. Let them believe what they desire to believe. Let them think what they believe. Let them believe what they think. Their words do not define me nor do they construct who I am. Only one being has such capabilities of doing so.

I remember what my father told me. We went to a Church one day, and while we were within the restroom, being the young enthusiastic child that I was, I said, “Come on Dad! We gotta get back to the show!” If I’m correct, that made him a bit discouraged. As he and my mother both told about how I knew even at that age, and younger, what reverence was. Was reverence here in this Church, amongst this congregation of people, or was it all for show?

I can’t tell you. Yet, I can tell you this. The third time I visited, I still felt the venom. I felt the anger. I felt the antagonist rising up within me wanting to contradict everything that was being spoken.

Was I destroying my faith, or was my faith being tested? I do remember this. I entered the House again.

Yes, the House. The House where the Dragon Knelt. The House where I could only witness the magnificence of the Creator. The House where I was bathed in the swords of light. The House where I had entered as I was walking to the altar.

When I was in the House, I was not alone. There was no light this time. There was the Creator. There was the Red Dragon, the Archfiend. Both the Red Dragon and I were miniscule, pitiful even at the hands of the Creator.

It’s weird to say, I was at the level with the Creator’s hands, which were enormous, yet, I could see the Creator sitting. It was like I was on an invisible table or the finest clearest glass surface ever known. Like I was a subject being analyzed, possibly even experimented with. Yet, to use the words experiment when talking about a child, a created, in front of its Creator, would be a cruel misunderstanding. Yet even though I could see myself gazing upon the Creator's magnificence, I could not see the Creator’s face. For we are not equally yoked.

In the House I wasn’t dressed in the clothes that I was wearing when I entered the Church. In the House I was wearing a white gown. In the House, I was wearing nothing but a white long shirt of a gown. It seemed like I was wearing an altar server alb. That was the one piece of clothing that I was clothed in, covered in, inside of the House. For it seemed to be something that would be worn of angels that were cherubs, or of souls returning to the pearly gates. If it were not such as that, then it must’ve been that of the souls that were born from the pools of the Creator’s Chalice. Once amorphous, swimming around as tadpoles and interacting with those who have also been created as we please, once pulled out by the garbs we are blessed with or scooped into the Hands of the Magnificence, only then do we take form. As we are made, we are constructed, in the Creator’s image, by the Creator’s image.

Silky and white, if not almost transparent. This was the clothing of my soul, that was not worn for shame or for safeguarding me, but it was being clothed in the Creator’s love. Hence, its purity.

In the House, I wasn’t who I was. In the House, I wasn’t the strong maturing young man that I am today. In the House I was a young boy. Young, scared, afraid, small, and almost seemingly at awe at being in front of the Creator. “Have fear in the Lord and Rejoice with trembling.” If I were a Quaker, the trembling of my knees, the trembling of my legs, the trembling of my spirit, the quivering of my eyes, and the tightening of my throat would be all the rejoicement that one would need to see that I have such piety. This, what I experienced, was fear of the Lord.

The Red Dragon, the Archfiend, I saw this time. From behind me it stood. From behind me it spread its wings. From behind me it roared and bellowed. From behind me its yellow eyes twinkled and flashed red, as if summoning the bloodlust raging from deep down within it as if Hell itself had opened the floodgates of perdition. It used its arms. It used legs. It took the position ready to pounce. Then, it leapt into the air.

Swooping in a large aggressive circle, as if climbing a spiral staircase, the Red Dragon rose up to meet the Creator. The Red Dragon rose up to meet the Father. Feeling the gust of wind from its wings I shielded myself from its wing blasts. Peering through my eyelids, feeling the winds blow against me, I thought I had to shield my eyes from dust and dirt that was stirred up into the air. Yet, I thought I had to. I thought the dust was there. Yet, it wasn’t at all. It was my belief in it and in my fear of wanting to protect my eyes that made me feel that I was being hit and struck by dirt and dust. The only dust that was there was the Dragon and I.

Not being able to meet the Father eye-to-eye, the Red Dragon perspired. Taking in a deep breath, it breathed a geyser of flames from its jaw into Father’s face, into Father’s beard. Sure, Father’s beard may have had a new hole burnt into it, but it didn’t harm the Father at all. Father was unconcerned with the flames of the Red Dragon, of the Archfiend. In fact, the Father even chuckled. As if this was a normal occurrence for Father, to have the Red Dragon, the Archfiend, to breathe flames into Father’s beard.

When the Red Dragon breathed its breath into Father’s beard, into the beard of the Mighty and Magnificent Creator, I could see the light it produced, I could feel the heat that it emanated. Within my baser instincts for survival I could sense the bloodlust radiating animosity against the Father. I could sense the need, I could taste the desire, I could palpitate from the sheer thirst for vengeance against the Father.

Father, Lord, Creator, Almighty, allowed the Red Dragon to burn a hole into the beard. Father allowed the strike to occur. Instead of remaining untouched, it allowed a small victory to be bestowed upon the Red Dragon, the Archfiend, but why?

To feel. To understand. To allow the Red Dragon to come forth. That’s why. To allow the Red Dragon to not bring forth its trouble to me, but to bring them further, to bring it forth to the Father, Almighty. In remaining perfectly unharmed, the resentment would have only grown that much more. Shirking off the best efforts of one who holds such spite would’ve allowed it to sow more seeds of vexation, eventually dominating the landscape of the Red Dragon’s heart with an orchard stretching as far as the East is from the West with grapes of wrath. Allowing such a small victory allowed the Creator to not just win the battle, but more than the eventual, futile war.

The chucklings of the Father’s deep voice reverberated the pure table, and resonated with the very core of my being. It was the kind of reverberation that was more than capable of giving birth to milky ways and galaxies across the layers of fabric of interfoldings of many universes.

Chuckling like a Father does at a child’s inability to accept the reality at hand, a gentle hand was reached out, and the Red Dragon was seized.

The mighty beast, the Red Dragon seemed nothing like a mere kitten within the Hand of the Creator. The Red Dragon roared, and struggled at first. Like an animal caught within a trap, struggling for freedom. Like a child trying to throw a temper tantrum, it used all of its strength to unfold its wings, to break free, to rebel.

Whether or not one was within the House, on Its Steps, or elsewhere where the House was not, all were still Created by the Creator, whether they wished to acknowledge It or not.

The Red Dragon rebelled, it struggled, it squirmed in the Hand of God. Even with all of its might, it could not break free. With all of its power, its strength was insignificant, meaningless in not just the face of true power, but Whole Might.

Chuckling again, the Creator allowed me to bear witness to this Great Happening. As if there was spit on the Thumb of the Hand, Father wiped at one side of the face of the Dragon. Almost immediately, the horns, the skin from the beast, and the red lines from its body were wiped away in an instant. “Ashes to Ashes.”

It was becoming a Red Dragon no more. Its face wasn’t that of a Dragon. It was that of- of- a child. Even the wings of the Red Dragon were starting to turn to dust, and float away into the cosmos of the universe where we were. The rest of its body itself started to fall off as small flakes of dirt onto the cosmic winds of the Father’s chuckling.

Then with a swipe to the other side of its face, the Thumb removed the features of the dragon only to reveal the full face of the child, of the boy… of a son. With a big “Hmmm…” as if the Lord was pleased with the work currently done, the son was placed down next to me, released from the Hand.

With skin still as black as the dragon’s coloration, and eyes still of a piercing yellow, the son and I met one another’s gaze. Was the son’s skin black, or just covered in dust? I could not say. Yet, the son wore the same garment as I did, except where mine was a near transparent pure white, the son’s was that of a dingy black, almost a void. Whereas mine was that of the stars of night, his was the night itself with which harbored the stars themselves.

Shocked, stricken, and struck by such awesome power, when we gazed into the eyes of one another, tears formed on the rims of our eyelids, pouring from out of our ducts. For the dams of the emotional pain and anger could well up no longer.

For we are finite.

We cried.

Our mouths which were at first open and agape, shut quickly and as if sour limes from Eden were plopped onto our tongues. Having no words to spare, no words, no language to use, nothing that could come forth from us as such, the tears started to run. When they did so, we both gasped before we embraced one another in a hug that couldn’t even be shared between the closest brothers ever to exist. “Dust to dust.”

The Father chuckled, sighed a breath of relief, and happily exalted in joy all at once while remaining silent. The presence of the Creator’s intentions were more present than the hearts worn upon the sleeves of an army of a thousand honest souls.

As the dust and ashes swirled around us, as our cries gave salt of the Earth that would form deposits upon our albs, we briefly pushed apart, looking one another within the pupils. I knew that I couldn’t leave the son here. I knew that the son wasn’t the Red Dragon. I learned that the Red Dragon was me. I learned that the Red Dragon was a part of myself that I was trying to keep from the Creator. Yet, even in all of my angst, even in the orchards of the grapes of wrath, I could not hide the Red Dragon from the Lord. Just as the first humans, Adam and Eve tried to hide from the Lord, I had learned that there was no place I could hide from the Father, nor could I hide myself or parts of myself. For it is impossible to hide such things that we are to give back to the Creator. For the Creator made such things for us to share. Our anger, joy, grief, depression, spite, wealth, fears, and so much more than has been given unto us to share.

I am no prodigal son. I am no lost sheep. For as long as I exist, as long as I am Created, I know that I am always in the presence of the Father. Yet, I have felt like the elder brother to the prodigal son. I have felt like the worker in the field who’s been there toiling in the dirt before sunrise, only to receive the same payment, if not even less, as the workers who join just before sunset. The Kingdom belongs to all those the Creator Created, it is a gift one must continuously learn to willingly accept. In my stillness, I guess I have not truly- No, I guess I have not accepted this lesson in its whole, in its state of entirety.

Looking into the eyes of the son, looking into the eyes of myself, I saw the pupils of that which used to be the Red Dragon. In the pupil, I saw something. I saw the pupil unfold itself, then, almost unfurl. It was that of a snake. No, it was that of a serpent. I saw Ouroboros. Then, as quickly as it unfolded, it bit upon its tail again. “Everything comes full circle.” It was a whole pupil, undistinguishable as the eyes as any other living being on this planet.

I learned what I had to do.

Wiping away the tears from each other’s cheeks, and wiping the Salt from our eyes upon our albs, upon our gowns, we embraced for a hug. Then we were one. We are no more, but we are I.

Our albs were no longer the stars and the night, but that of the cosmos itself. No longer being a pure transparent white, nor a black darker than the absence of the stars of night, the milky ways, galaxies, and cosmos all swirled upon our new alb. More than the grains of sand upon the beach, more than the stars of the night, and more than the birth of generation previous, present, and to come, did they number upon our alb. It was an alb of the space, and those that resided in the space between spaces that was made. It was an alb that blended in perfectly with the pure table, even the Creator’s Chair.

Waving a Hand, gesturing beneath me, was the rim of a chalice. This was not the rim to the Chalice where the Created are Created and poured from. Within this Chalice was where I knew I needed to go.

Though Church may have ended and I may have talked with a pastor at length about the antagonist, I knew where I was being sent to, and where I had to go next.

Hearing the Father’s light laughter as I descended with a wave of a finger, I returned to the Glass Lake, God’s Eye.

Author's Notes: If you enjoyed reading this story and would like to listen to it, please click the link below to listen to it for free on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RZd_O0MmE4