April 24 - St. Hairy Clitoris, Primal Philosopher

Eleutheria was born into the world shortly after the alphabet was invented and men began to use words to build the foundation of what is now called civilization.  Back then, it was just called sweat.  Without a plan particularly, they placed brick on brick, and often a brick was a few generations or a life. Words became the currency on sophistication’s exchange and for the first time in history’s murmur, men were required to trade in words to survive.  Some did not, and fell back into the well of woods, where they wandered with beasts and negotiated life each hour in the disorder of unmitigated flesh.

Orphaned at 6, Eleutheria learned to fend for herself. Equally at home with the meadow’s butterflies and the city’s scrimmage, her favourite activity was observing the world. She’d sit for days at a time watching the churn of nature and men as if they were all part of her but not she one of them.  Then she became a woman and she was beautiful and all the men in the town wanted her. So she fled to the forest and hid, but the men found her and gave her to the mayor to decide what to do with her, and he made her his wife.  She was given the best food, a generous clothing allowance and three servants; in exchange, she was required to bear children and attend official functions and always be polite and show off her beauty.  So she grew bitter toward the world and swore dark prophecies against it.  On one of these nights she placed a hot iron on her face to disfigure it so that men would be repelled by her, and she ran into the woods and rutted with a bear and gave birth to St. Hairy Clitoris in 535 BCE.  She took the boy with her as she sat and watched the birds in the meadow and the men in the market. And no one talked to her and they avoided her eyes.

When St. Hairy Clitoris was 6, Eleutheria died. He went into the city and watched the affairs of men and listened to their words.  When he was a man, he began speaking, but the men in the marketplace resented him and told him his job was to watch.  St. Hairy Clitoris said, You’re right, my job is to watch.  And then it’s to say what I’ve seen. And he kept speaking. And the men told him he was too useless for the city - which was a place of action and not for one who simply sat around and criticized.

St. Hairy Clitoris said, You’re right, I am useless, and if you would listen to my uselessness, your lives would be more useful.  And the men of the city bound St. Hairy Clitoris to the ground and shat on him until he suffocated.

From the gap between his mother’s beauty and disfigurement,

From the gap between her fashion and his conception,

From the gap between the butterflies and the market,

From the gap between his silence and his speaking,

From the gap between his solitude and his desire,

From the gap between his uselessness and the merchants,

He wrote a book and its words are one and the one is fire.

The Council of I elevated him to sainthood on the first day a flower grew from his makeshift tomb.  Let us honor the saint today with our souls and flesh.