Sunshine Satellite Story Podcast

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” -C.S. Lewis

Not far from here, there was a garden encircled by a stone wall. Lacing through the middle of the garden was a healthy, productive Grapevine. In this garden, songbirds laid their eggs in nests constructed from pieces of vine that they had clipped with their sharp beaks.

The mother and father songbirds both worked hard, protecting the eggs that housed their baby birds. They would keep the eggs warm until they hatched, and then they would continue to provide warmth, love, and food until the babies grew old enough to fly away and eat the grapes on the vine without help.

Now there was in this same garden, a Fox and a Snake. Fox was tricky and fearful, but Snake was cunning and evil. Although the Grapevine had never failed to produce enough grapes to feed all the animals in the past, Fox was afraid of scarce resources. He worried that someday there would not be enough grapes. The old Snake was everyone's enemy, plotting in the hope that he could one day utilize Fox's fear to consume the songbirds.

Now, Snake was more crafty than all the animals that lived in the garden. One late night, while the garden slept, Snake brought Fox some fermented grapes to eat. While Fox ate, Snake uncoiled an evil plot.

The songbirds knew that Fox and Snake were not their allies, but they did esteem their worldly wisdom. They knew that Snake could perceive when frosts were coming and that Fox was full of gossip about events happening in distant fields. So when Fox and Snake went to the songbirds heralding impending destruction, they listened from a distance at what they had to say.

Snake explained that an expected frost would kill most of the Grapevine, while Fox warned that there would not be enough grapes to sustain the flock in the spring. The songbirds knew that the Grapevine had never failed to provide everything needed for nesting and food. Even in the cold months, the birds could eat the plentiful insects in the fallen leaves and fruits. However, Fox and Snake spoke with conviction, so the songbirds listened to them. A seed of anxiety was sown.

Time in the garden continued as it had. The sun rose in the east and traced a happy arch across the sky, before melting into the arms of the soft summer nights in the west. The enlivening afternoon rains fell on all the animals whether they were wise or foolish, evil or good. In all this abundance, the songbirds forgot to remember to be afraid of scarce resources.

By and by, Snake warned the songbirds again that if they did not leave the garden and go into the fields, there would not be enough food. While the songbirds continued as they had been, laying eggs and building nests to protect them, they were uneasy. Snake knew that, if he wanted Fox's seeds of anxiety to sprout into fear, he would need to water the threat with more deception.

Again, evil enlarged in darkness. At night, while the songbirds were sleeping with their eggs, Fox disguised his voice to sound like an owl. He ventriloquized, "Who? Who -who? Who will adventure with me to the hills? Who will go out into the fields to gather better food?"

Some of the father songbirds heard the owl call and left. Some of the fathers left because they were impressed by the wildness of the mysterious owl. Others left because they believed that they would have better opportunities if they abandoned their eggs. Some fathers deserted because they saw the others forsaking their families and felt compelled to imitate. But still, the mother songbirds remained with their eggs, alone in the quiet darkness.

Although the tricksters had caused significant damage, they were not satisfied. Their ultimate goal was to own the entire Grapevine for themselves. Again, in the night, under the deep shadow of the stone wall, they applied the final coating of corruption to their deceit.

Fox found...

The story is drawing to a close. Moiety and Akedah have faced a variety of dragons and have learned from each one a different aspect of the transformative ability of chaos. Akedah, the overt representation of a hero, is being reborn as he wakes up from a death-like state and Moiety the covert representation of a hero has risen from the pressurized depths of hell, bringing back an unknown treasure (the dragon's pearl) to combine the known threat -the (mechanical heart). Both heroes learn that their main antagonists are not each other, but forces their own psyches.

"It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order."

― Douglas R. Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern 1979 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction for exploring mathematical relationships in creative processes.

Akedah's eyes slammed open into a body filled with pain. Moiety was crying, or more accurately, weeping hysterically with snot free-flowing from her nose.

He coughed. His mouth and nose were full of cottony silkworm thread.

"You came back!"

As Akedah pushed through the layered wrappings of silk threads, he felt the pins and needles of blood flowing back into his small capillaries. It made him sneeze.

Moiety was trying to hug him. He stiffened. For a brief moment, he considered utilizing her repentance and joy as a way to gain the upper hand in the relationship. Now that she wanted him, he could manipulate her more easily into being compliant. He would be able to use his approval or disapproval of her as endless currency to get what he wanted out of the relationship. He gave her a cold, distant look.

"What is wrong?" she asked.

Akedah continued in silence. She still looked like a wet cat. He remembered his half-finished book in the high mountain city and the importance that it had placed on his motivations above his actions. He considered the fact that the quality of his life would hinge not on what he accomplished but his motivations underpinning his accomplishments.

All Akedah could think of was her back to him, sailing away in his boat. He wanted revenge on this woman for the way she had unfairly treated him, but he also knew from looking at his life book, that it did not matter. He would only be right in the end if he was able to forgive her. No one in all eternity, especially not the old Morning Star, would ever care if his personal grievances were resolved to his satisfaction. The thing that would give his life meaning would be his ability to overlook the insult, to despise Shame, and choose love despite spite.

Akedah again laid it down and let it go. He would be doing a lot of that.

The North Wind was long gone now, a soft, warm sunset had taken her place. Akedah stood up and promptly fell back down. Moiety rushed to help him.

"You have been asleep for three days," the Leviathan informed him. "Your strength will return." But to Moiety, he said, "Do not cling to him. He has not finished the transformation. You cannot help him in this, Princess. You must allow him to gather his own strength, or his vitality will be stunted. He must generate his fortitude from within right now, or he will forever be dependent on women for succor."

With considerable effort, the Viking pulled himself up to stand using a low tree branch for support, "What is that clicking sound?"

Moiety listened. She could not hear anything but ocean waves and the residual breezes left behind in the jungle canopy from North Wind's impossibly long hair. Then, she noticed it, not so much as a sound but as a nagging feeling of urgency. Softly, the feeling reached her senses as an irritating sound. The muffled metronome was present and persistent, as persistent as time. It was sending out vibrations through the jungle soil like the concentric ripples on still water when a thrown rock breaks the

Moiety had been so firmly calcified into a selfish princess, that it took the heat from the gates of hell and the pressure of the deepest trench in the ocean to soften her soul enough to be released from its binding mold. In so doing, she had, with the help of her friend, the Leviathan, defeated the ancient Nidhogg Wyrm, the titan tapeworm responsible for draining the roots of the World Tree of gratitude. However, we must not forget that the only reason that Moiety is still alive and having this adventure is that the Viking volunteered to take her place, absorbing the wrath of the chameleon's curse. In chapter thirteen, we go back in time to follow the Viking's Vision.

Moiety had been so firmly calcified into a selfish princess, that it took the heat from the gates of hell and the pressure of the deepest trench in the ocean to soften her soul enough to be released from its binding mold. In so doing, she had, with the help of her friend, the Leviathan, defeated the ancient Nidhogg Wyrm, the titan tapeworm responsible for draining the roots of the World Tree of gratitude. However, we must not forget that the only reason that Moiety is still alive and having this adventure is that the Viking volunteered to take her place, absorbing the wrath of the chameleon's curse. In chapter thirteen, we go back in time to follow the Viking's Vision.

The Leviathan and the Princess have discovered several things in the great trench in the deepest ocean: the roots of the World Tree, the Nidhogg wyrm, and the gates of the Abyss. The Nidhogg wyrm is a giant tapeworm sucking the energy out of the roots, and the ocean floor is slowly seeping into hell. The Leviathan uses his comparatively smaller size to infect the Nidhogg at a cellular level. Moiety has discovered that she can stop the influx of the universe into her black hole heart by utilizing the creative energy of the Universal Vibration that surrounds her. However, she has lost Odin's Scroll of Poetry, and the pieces of the wyrms tale that she cut off have come to life and are attaching themselves to the World Tree in a new effort to drain the World Tree of its gratitude. We return to Moiety and the Leviathan as they search the floor for the lost scroll and discuss the nature of the Abyss.

Job's Leviathan meets the Nidhogg Wyrm at gates of Hel at the base of Yggdrasil

If Moiety had understood exactly what her problems were, we could say that she had been running away from them; however, the princess was only just now learning to call things by their right name. The tsunami that resulted from lighting Odin’s scroll of poetry on fire washed the misandrogynous mermaids away, but it also flooded the entire island. The weight of the giant and the anchor inside of her was pulling her down despite the scroll’s magical ability to provide some buoyancy. Job’s Leviathan has been to carry the princess down into the deepest part of the ocean to confront her final dragon.

The Princess had stolen the Viking’s boat and left him on the island. Honestly, she did not feel too bad about the decision. That is until she discovered the holes that the chameleon and his zombified army of automatons had drilled into her chest. Unfortunately, the Princess’s chest was full of nothing, and that nothing created a negative pressure gradient which threatened shrink and suck anything around it inside of it. So far, it had inhaled an anchor, a rope, and Aipaloovek the ocean giant. This was only part of Moiety’s struggles. The mermaids had also returned. Moiety accidentally summoned a tsunami by lighting Odin’s scroll of poetry on fire which washed the mermaids away, but it also flooded the entire island. The scroll which she had carelessly lit turned out to be a light that revealed the true nature and character of the objects which were illuminated by it.

The zombified princess is shrinking and will soon be small enough to fit into the gates of hell. The severed sliver of the tongue is still wrapped around her ankle. The giant glowworm explains to the Viking what is wrong with love, and the Viking must use vision to make an important choice.

This is the grown version of the Christmas story: the one that is set in first-century Palestine and lived out by desperate refugees rather than the one that is set in eighteenth-century Amish country and lived out by middle-aged American farmers.