To say there
are strangers who threaten us,
in our immigrants and infidels.
They say there is strangers too dangerous,
in our theaters and bookstore shelves.
Those who know what's best for us,
must rise and save us from ourselves.
Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand.
Ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand-
"Witch
Hunt"-Rush
When I turned thirteen I suffered my first real case of loneliness, but it was not from some relationship with a girl; it was from the loss of my mother. My mother was taken away from me because of her good heart and the ignorance of men. Whenever Mother would visit the village below the Castle she would often hear about a particular villager who was very sick. She would inquire what was wrong with this person, and inform their family members that perhaps she could help them. When she returned home to the Castle she would take some of the herbs from the grounds of the Castle and create a remedy. Unfortunately the Church seemed to have a problem with that. Their paranoia that anything they did not understand was witchcraft resulted in Mother being seized by a mob one day. As I understood it a few years later, she was presented to the parish priest, who declared her to be a witch, and that she should suffer death for trying to help people.
(With that in mind, I have a question I would like to ask all the patriarchs, bishops, priests, and deacons within the Church. Would you please explain to me how someone trying to sincerely help people is a witch? Mother was not sitting around some Satanic altar chanting praises to the Devil and calling for his help to make potions! She was using herbs from the ground for God's sake! Furthermore, she was trying to help people; but you accused her of being a witch! Your Jesus was accused of casting out devils in the name of Beelzebub, but He responded the scribes and Pharisees by asking them how can Satan cast out Satan? With that in mind if my mother was an agent of the Devil wouldn't she have actually tried to hurt those people rather than help them? You stupid Church leaders! Why do you have to act so hateful to things you cannot understand, when you are called to a message of peace by your God?)
All right, let me be fair and state that none of the Orthodox Church leaders today are responsible for what happened to my mother; and my brother-in-law, an Orthodox priest, offered me an apology for what happened. So did my friend, the late Father Miceadu, but all that forgiveness was too late for my mother.
That evening when Mother was late arriving home my father started to worry. She was usually always back at the Castle at a specific time, and when that specific time passed and she was still not in hours later, Father decided to venture into town.
When he arrived he noticed the smell of burning flesh in the air, and entering the village-square he was met with the terrible shock of seeing my mother's corpse. Mother was burned at the stake, typical of Church punishment for witches. Father would not have recognized her if it was not for the necklace that was around the corpse's neck. He immediately broke down and cried, but some particular villager, a drunk, noticed his grief and took exception. He said that my mother was a witch, and it was in accordance with the will of God that she be put to death. The citizen's comment filled my father with the rage of an angry beast. I do not know exactly what he did except that he told me eventually that the villager would never say another cruel word about my mother again.
The loss was not any easier for me. I remember waiting at the Castle's entrance for Father to return with my mother.
When Father did eventually return and Mother was not at his side I asked him, "Where's Mother, Father?"
Father began to cry. I had never known him to cry…ever. Now I became very worried. "She's no more, Adrian. Those bastards in the village took her life from her. All she did was try to help them, but they accused her of defying the will of God. That's all God ever does to people! Lisa did nothing but help those people, but now God took her away from us!"
I too broke down and cried. My father took me into his arms, and did his best to comfort me, as I did my best to comfort him; but I could say nothing. My mother was gone, and was never coming back. The best way I can explain how my mother's loss affected me would be to use my two-year-old as an example. Whenever Maria is away for a significant amount of time Alcander will begin to cry for her to return. Of course when Maria finally returns he is a happy baby once again. My mother was never coming back. And I may not have been a baby anymore, but that certainly did not stop me from crying like one.
When I finally regained my composure I asked, "Father, why did God take Mother away from us?" My father sneered at the question. That is when he told me everything about his relationship with God. He told me about defending the Church from the threat of Islam, but how God rewarded him with taking away his wife at the time. He said that he was starting to feel happy once again, but God had to take away his joy just to spite him. Furthermore, he added that he wished he could travel to Jerusalem just so he could spit on the ground Jesus Christ walked on.
My take on all this was fear. I never saw my father so filled with hate. He REALLY detests God to the point that it is frightening, but my look on God at the time was much different. I honestly did not know very much about the teachings of Christianity, except that I understood the concept that God was Triune, and that Jesus Christ was the second person of this Trinity. I also knew that this same God (Jesus Christ) came down to earth in the form of man to redeem the world by dying on a cross. My mother had always taught me never to hate people, because sometimes they could not help being who they are. She taught me this lesson after the terrible incident with her parents when I was still a boy.
Because God, or who I understood God to be, came to earth in the form of man I simply could not hate God based on the lesson that my mother taught me, but at the same time I was not exactly happy with my mother's death. There were times throughout my youth that I would look up at the sky and shout in anger to the heavens. I was yelling at God; asking him, why did he take my mother away from me? What is so sad about all of this is that if it was not for that mob it is very possible that my father would have undergone the ancient Christian blessing that I did to remove the vampire curse. If that had happened the legend of Vlad the Impaler would have been simply that, a legend.