Crumbling Temples, Crumbling Lessons

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Crumbling temples, crumbling lessons

On the train leaving Roma (Rome)

In each of those temples we now see as ruins there had to be a last priest of that cult.  Someone had to face the reality that their center of worship, the center for a worldwide empire, the center of their life, was no more.  Did economic conditions or waning faith of the populace simply mean the priest could no longer make a living?  Was his faith mercenary in nature, and did the lack of paying clients provide opportunity to get out of that stinkin’ job and move on to something better?  Or did he grieve over society’s faithlessness, and mourn their consequent fate?

Was the end traumatic, a violent paroxysm of barbarian invaders, killing the last priest as he tried to shield the altar with his own body?  Or did the last priest quietly lock the door one last time, glancing over his shoulder as he walked down the stone street to join peasant relatives in the countryside? 

Did he simply change vestments, marketing trends dictating closing out one failing temple chain in order to open a franchise with the new Christian growth opportunity?  Or did the last priest simply die out, not knowing anything else to do, continuing duties as best he could in his dotage, no colleagues left, no young successor to carry on the flame?  Did a neighbor notice he had not come home for a few nights, and finally go find where he had fallen?

After almost a thousand years of temple sacrifice, there was a last ritual, a last prayer, a last priest.  After almost a thousand years, a belief to which lives and material were committed was universally accepted as irrelevant.  The statue no longer mattered to anyone, nor the incense, robes, or rituals, not to people then and certainly not to us today, other than as idle, or idol, curiosity. 

But if that poignant image of a last priest, deceased on the floor, or dejected on the street, or desperate in flight, evokes in us any hint of compassion or connection, then through those thousand years of altar and ritual and the thousand-plus years since they crumbled, we feel the touch of the substance, meaning, foundation, and reality underlying all that has ever mattered through the ever changing vestments of temples, doctrines, and creeds. 

 Copyright 2016 Don Ray