Pale Horse

We are not here standing on some ancient mystical ground once marched on by Constantine, or trampled by Crusaders and Pilgrims. We are the lowly laymen in the most recently settled region of the most recently discovered new world. We are the final corner of the Earth; the far West, guarded by the Archangel Gabriel; where the Word, the Way, the Truth, and the Life has reached. We, the youngest creatures. The bones of our first enemies lay below us just 150 years old. A people our grandfathers remember - when Lake Celilo was a run of cascades and falls.

Built on top of a Kalapuya burial ground, we are the bone collectors of Willamette Valley. When king-chautsh first arrived on these shores, no shots were fired. No cannons burst against the cliffs. The battle began unintentionally, and our weapons were silent. Only the groaning of the infected, and the howls of the Pacific breeze blowing through their empty villages were heard.

And it was our Sisters of Providence with devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows who watched over the sick. And it was our great-grandfathers: fur trappers, loggers, mariners, and trail blazers who buried the dead. And now their grandsons walk old covered wagon ruts in the alkali dust picking up shell beads and obsidian arrowheads. Life and death.

The Lord grants a Pale Horse when a people are weak. And then the people will shelter in, stress over things, think of their failures, remember death, consider God, work with what they have, and then eventually reach out with some kind of treatment. Healing and burying. We are the sword of Saint Peter, slicing and dissecting. The Grail revives, restores, and reconciles. We train to shoot the heart out of a man until he’s no longer a deadly threat. But as soon as he falls, life-saving procedures begin. The Lord takes away, and the Lord gives.

It was not long ago, but people forget. We came to these cliffs on white sails by light of a waning moon - a pale replica of the sun behind billows of saltwater fog; our name was Death. And we brought life.
We prayed for a plague. Now go to your room. Think about what you’ve done.