CAN YOU TELL ME HOW TO GET TO SECULAR STREET?
Once upon a time there was a young man named Elias. Elias lived in a city called Earthville. The main street in Earthville was a street called Secular Street. It was a large street where most of the daily activities and business occurred. Secular Street was kind of a dingy and dirty street. The sun did not shine very much there, but the people there tried to make the best of it. Their basic philosophy was similar to the philosophy of the musicians who played in the dance band on the Titanic. Eat, drink and be merry.
Secular Street was a one way street that happened to lead into another nearby city. That city was named ‘Hell’. Hell was a mysterious city and there were rumors that it was not a nice place. Nevertheless, Hell had some interesting gates through which people could enter into the city. The gates of the city were quite exciting to see. They had flashing lights and loud music all around. There was opulent casinos everywhere and there was lots of dancing girls. The alcohol flowed freely. And there was carny men inviting you in with promises of self gratification. The place seemed to be an inviting and attractive place, although some people said that they occasionally heard distant screams of anguish coming from behind the gates, long with a very foul smell. That was an area where no outsiders were allowed to go without permission. But generally speaking people ignored the rumors about the screams because the ‘gates’ were simply the coolest attraction for miles around.
There was another Street in Earthville that ran parallel to Secular Street. It was called Jesus Boulevard. It was also a one way street, but it ran in the opposite direction. At the end of the Boulevard, it was said to run into another city called ‘Heaven’. Jesus Boulevard was out of the view of Secular Street, but it was not too far away, and all you really needed to do to see it, was to turn the corner and look for it. If you choose to get onto Jesus Boulevard, it would take you in the opposite direction from Secular Street and it was said that it would eventually take you to Heaven, if that was where you wanted to go.
Elias was a bright young man, but he seemed a little sad and, some people thought he was a little ‘too quiet’. He had been a resident of Secular Street for many years and had never travelled very far away from home. One day, as he was walking down Secular Street, he had a odd kind of feeling when he passed a certain corner. It was a feeling that someone or something was calling him. He decided to turn the corner and look around. He walked for awhile in this foreign territory and he eventually came to a sign which said ‘Jesus Boulevard’. He began to walk down the boulevard and decided that he liked it there. The street was cleaner and the view was much prettier than the one on secular street and it seemed like the sun shone brighter there. He went back home that day, but in the days to come, he went back to Jesus Boulevard and started to spend much of his time there. He would often ride on the bus that drove down the street, and he would enjoy looking at the nice houses and talking to the friendly people that rode on the bus. The fare was very reasonable and the bus drivers were always happy and glad to see him.
In time Elias’ friends back on Secular St. noticed that he was missing and wondered where he went. When they heard the word that Elias had decided to look around on Jesus Boulevard, they became suspicious. The people of Secular Street had all heard about Jesus Boulevard. They had heard that it was a very nice road, but it was unfamiliar territory to them and, thus, none of them really knew what to make of it.
In an effort to dissuade people from going there, many people said that the road was actually an illusion, and did not even really exist. The people of Earthville had been told that by various sources, and especially the professors who taught at the University of Earth. So most of the citizenry, basically, just ignored the whole notion of Jesus Boulevard. Plus, they were all too entranced by Secular Street and the Gates of Hell to turn the corner and look for the boulevard. And besides, they had also heard that the vehicles that travelled on that boulevard were a little ‘peculiar’.
So the people of Secular Street lived their lives and carried out their business. Some of them were contented, I suppose, and some were not, but very few of them ever bothered to turn the corner to see if they could find Jesus Boulevard.
Over the years, the citizens of Secular Street died, as we all do at some point in time, and they were replaced by their offspring who practiced the same habits as their parents did. They took up residences on Secular Street and gave their allegiances to it. And they, like their parents before them, just lived out their lives, occasionally getting some small amount of sensual pleasure from hanging around the gates of Hell. Some of them, it has been told, actually took up full time residences in Hell. Oddly, they were never heard from again.
Elias, on the other hand, bought a property on Jesus Boulevard one day and took up residency there. He was noticeably happier there. He visited Secular Street once in awhile and tried to tell any of his ex-friends, who might be walking by, about how wonderful it was up on Jesus Boulevard. And those people would always nod and smile and wish him well and then proceed down the street to the ‘gates’ to see what was happening there.
One day, many years later, a beautiful big bus pulled up to Elias’ residence on Jesus Boulevard. It was a bus made of solid gold. It did not make any noise and it did not produce any exhaust fumes. It had the words ‘Heaven’ written on the top. There was also another word underneath written in smaller letters. It said ‘Express’. The bus driver was said to be a man whose face shone like the sun. The bus stopped in front of Elias’s house. Elias was prepared. He had exact change. He got on the bus.
The golden bus was a bus that was only seen on rare occasions. It was only seen at times when somebody died. The sun was shining and the birds were singing on that day as the beautiful golden bus drove away from Elias’s house and people who saw the bus that day say that they saw Elias waving out the window with a big smile on his face.
Yes, Earthville is still there today in the same place that it always was. Secular Street is still there and the buildings are still dingy and dirty. The Gates of Hell are still there and the bright lights still flash and the dancing girls still dance and the loud music still plays. And there are still the stories about the distant screaming, and still nobody pays much attention to those stories.
And so now my simple story comes to an end, but if you are a resident of Earthville, as I presume you are, I pray that I might be so bold as to offer you some advice. As a fellow citizen of Earthville, I advise you to ‘turn the corner’ one day and look for the boulevard that Elias lived on. Walk around there for awhile and look at the houses. They really are beautiful.
And, oh, by the way, I heard that Elias’s old house there is up for sale.
