229: A Sacred Trust

We weren’t scared, not ever.  Not even right at the start when the pastor told us.  We always knew we were special and that this would be our time.  It was everyone else who should be scared, unless they decided to join us.

We took to the streets to spread our message to anyone who would hear us.  So many were foolish and disbelievers and mocked us for our beliefs.  But each time we saved just a single soul we would all rejoice and welcome them into our family.  They too had a future now, they would be saved.

The pastor began with regular classes on how to achieve the necessary levels of purity to ascend when the time came.  We all practised daily, more than daily sometimes, almost constantly.  We felt the cleansing lights working through our bodies but still we practised until even the tips of our fingers glowed.  It was beautiful to see, never in oneself but only in ones companions.  In oneself it would be feeling that every pore, every cell, every neural pathway was lit with love.

The glow and the warmth sustained us in the times of the doubters.  Few believed our message, much as the pastor had predicted.  He said there would be just a small community of us and it would be up to us to start again and rebuild for the future in the world of the Promised Light.

He tested us, just once.  He tested our strength and our belief and we were found wanting.  Not one of us was ready for the ascension and we were not worthy of the forgiveness he bestowed on us.  He said he knew we might need more time to achieve purity and he had wanted to help.  Imagine how you would have felt, he told us, if you would have been left here for real, for want of practising that little bit harder.

We were each to recruit at least one person into the family and help them achieve purity to journey with us.  These new members would work towards building the new land for us all and we, the first believers, would be rewarded with their eternal gratitude and devotion.  We would not desire this, said the pastor, but it would occur anyway.  How could it fail to?

And then he told us the time was close and to prepare ourselves.  We were ready, we would ascend and we would live in the world of the Promised Light, glorying together in our family love and our happiness.

I’m not sure why they went ahead without me.  There is only me left now, not even a sign of the non-believers who refused to join our family.  Perhaps they believed inside, deep down and more than I did.  Perhaps I didn’t love enough or wasn’t sufficiently pure.  I tried my hardest and practised all the time.

Could it be because I was the tiniest bit scared, even though I tried not to be?