I earned an award from Wedding Wire, and wanted to see what it looked like:

 

Hmmm… I’m going to have to get some help on fixing this up a bit…

A poem in honor of Moses…

His feet dragged up those last few agonizing yards,

In Card’s XENOCIDE, they’re talking about whether or not we have free will. And Ender brings up the idea that there are an infinite series of lines of dominoes each comprised of infinite numbers all falling so you can never find an ultimate cause of anything yet everything being totally caused by something else. Hence no free will.

That got me to thinking. What if we are like a metallic domino with a magnetic charge that we vary by direction and intensity. And there are those infinite series of dominoes bumping into us pushing us in all kinds of directions. But there are also an infinite series of dominoes that also affect us but not by bumping us: by pulling us with their own magnetic charges. These are causative or ends dominoes: purposes.

So while we are pushed by events that happen to us, we are at the same time pulled by those causes and purposes that attract us or perhaps, repel us. And especially in relation to these latter dominoes, the strength of the charges inside us, which we have the power to vary as we will, have an enormous influence on the strength of the dominoes’ attraction on us.

In Orson Scott Card’s XENOCIDE, Wang-Mu says, “The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven…”

I have never heard it expressed so perfectly. Perhaps wisdom is the art of learning from that fabric and then weaving with better threads going forward, as best and imperfectly as you can…

Does that make sense? Have I spotted a treasure among our literary gems, or have I deluded myself?