On the Wings of Hope: Prose (Recognized)

Priest

Good health to all of ye, oh laymen!

Thus I have decided to address you in such a wonderful and marvelous way. For we, priests, you know, feel somewhat too boringly from time to time, that's it. You go here and there to us in the crowds on festivals and public prayers, bow us up to over legs and kiss our white hands, yet you have almost no desire even to speak with us a bit. Maybe during only a confession – but do you believe that we do thirst for yet another tiresome monologue of that repugnant acts of yours? And deeds these of yours are sometimes so horrific, that we desire to curtail ears of ours into a tubule and to furiously hush on you – yet one has to suffer, listening to all that shitty rubbish, and to sigh sadly at the end of it, having once again said that phrase intimate like a robot about the remission of sins of yours, for all has been prepaid according to the price list by you already. And thus we can do no other but to listen to all that bullshit, pretending that it interests us up to exhaustion, while feeling boredom there, in that booth confessionary, especially for that purpose being dark and concealed, so that you cannot see expressions on the faces of ours.

Or, say, to all these corpses, in iron boxes by us collected and as relics by us named, you go and worship, for we once have dared to call them as sacred... you almost kiss them in these yours attacks ecstatic, and some of you even decided to speak with them, as if the dead ones could talk... and of us, you didn't remember as if we were not live at all and they were more lively than us?

And it also happens sometimes that some layman arrives, forms on public prayers on all his family up to the tenth generation having filled silently and gloomy, and throws them in hands after having paid according to the price list in a cash desk... and we have no better thing than to pray either for a health or resting in the peace of their souls in that services of ours as if we know clearly of what sort of people in mentioned in form of these – possibly, some truly disgusting ones? And so we have to pray for the ones we know nothing about for the purpose we know all about – for the sake of gold, surely... for what is the other reason to make a prayer cost money?

And even more nasty parishioners do appear from time to time – they silently enter our temple, insert bought from the third parties candles in our candlesticks and light them up... and they are doing all of this so quietly and mournfully, being afraid to utter even a single word so that a strange feeling sometimes overwhelms me that this temple is not a house of God at all, but truly resembles some sort of cellar or a cemetery... oh, horrific! Myself I am being frightened by that thought but can do nothing, for such are the orthodox canons of behaving in these churches of ours. And if someone dares to violate these rules invented by us – either dress somewhat differently or sing something strange – publicly curse him will we, the faith of ours and morals thus protecting, may he bear no doubt of that!

And so here it comes out that we, churchmen, have already become sort of robots to you, and cannot we exchange the word good and salutary with you. And if it comes out that you bear a desire to talk with us in a personal conversation – then of you, our ill ones, have we to talk entirely, edifying you constantly as necessary! Oh, what a difficult business is that – to lay out councils and spit out advice. It happens that one of you comes to one of us and, you know, starts to be grooved – here's something is wrong in his life, there something is not right in his life once again, and thus he totally misses and lacks something based on his endless desires. And here we must sit, listening to you, or even worse standing still like a monument, inventing advice on the fly. And what advice can we lend ye, if we know both you and your situation only superficially? And thus we are forced to give you advice general, universal, by the time itself proven, – to come and visit our church once again, to buy yet another candle from our hands, to order a monthly public prayer (it's possible to order one-time prayers as well, but no so greatly effective they are, for they are too cheap in a money equivalent, ye know). And so you can become so tired from these monologues monotonous and advice identical, that to howl on a moon you desire only, thank God that it's invisible during the afternoon.