Albert McKinney was a man captured within an immediate, and “wholly” strong, sense of himself.
He believed in notions, Albert did.
He had a strong, deep-rooted faith in his notions.
For example, one of his silly notions was that a short, few thousand years ago a man walked the earth who could walk on water.
And such was the way in the new times.
Science and technology had (by this time in Albert’s life), taken over just about everything that was, or as it seemed, would be.
Tiny, little microscopic circuit boards with a vast array of fine little coppery and gold wires wove a three-dimensional herringbone pattern through silicon fields of deep green.
One could almost percieve little lillies in the array.
But they were only cold, hard, copper-dusted circuits, grown in green glass.
But what a beautiful array they were, these little circuits.
So beautiful in fact, that man had nearly forgotten such silly notions as actual lillies arrayed in a field.
Hell, by this point in time, people hardly ever left their stench-filled apartments.
They had forgotten all about such silly notions of lilles, and saviors, and majestic spirits that moved in whirl-winds in favor of their glass and copper gods.
They had become ensconsed in a full sense of themselves.
They were Narcisus, staring blindly at pixels and icons on a tiny computer screen, covered in glass that heaped nothing but love, and praise, back on them.
And oh, how they loved themselves.
And their little glass, and copper gadgets.
Hell, they’d never even seen real lillies.
Or experienced the love of Christ in the eyes of someone grieving the loss of a loved one and turning their tearful, scared eyes skyward toward Him, or in a simple, little child thanking God Almighty for sunshine, puppy dogs and ice cream cones.
There were no puppy dogs in their “ether”.
No sunshine, no God.
Just their sense of themselves, and the technology they so loved.
Silly, damned notions.
If only they would have considered the lillies of the field, for even they in their infinite wonder, beauty and glory, were not arrayed such as they, themselves (were arrayed, that is).
DNA strands woven through fields of sinew, bone and bubbly blood was their array; but of even that – they had forgotten.
Even their own fiber, for heaven’s sake.
But, (heaving sigh), they had little consideration for anything.
Anything at all.
A blank, deadly stare into a lifeless monitor with lifeless feedback from lifeless dead-heads on the other end of a lifeless line was all they had in this world.
That, and their lovely, coppery array.
Have mercy.
But McKinney, he had something else.
He had a silly notion.
And a convicted and fully-resolved faith in it.
Glory be.
Glory…be.
God bless you, Albert McKinney.
God bless you, richly (as I know He will).
And to you dead-heads…well…all I can say about that is…
“Have mercy!”.
The Fiction of MB Shepherd 