"The High Priestess of IB," Part II
Feb. 19th, 2004 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyrasantae
I know not how many of those speakers pay only lip service to the faith.
I, like the others, was taken by surprise at how different this ecclesiastical education was from what I had imagined. The High Priestess induced (or tried to, in any case) into us a strict regimen of labour for the Trinity: the self, the others, and the Church [of IB, of course]. We paid our tributes and offerings, then we worked day and night reading and writing texts we barely understood.
Some of us left because of incompatable character with those of the enlightened. Some broke under the strain but gathered themselves back together and pressed on. Some suffered in silence. Some had no difficulty -- but for a handful of these that would change. If you didn't get removed by that initial purge of the wrong-minded, you didn't have a choice but to persist. Her Holiness's dictum was that no worthy person, upon entry, shall be let exit freely (this could well be the Pontiff's declaration, yet we were as distant from him as a polar bear is to penguins, we do not even know his name, the verification of that idea was unimaginable to us). Nothing short of death would free you from your duties.
Not to say that we did not try.
I, like the others, was taken by surprise at how different this ecclesiastical education was from what I had imagined. The High Priestess induced (or tried to, in any case) into us a strict regimen of labour for the Trinity: the self, the others, and the Church [of IB, of course]. We paid our tributes and offerings, then we worked day and night reading and writing texts we barely understood.
Some of us left because of incompatable character with those of the enlightened. Some broke under the strain but gathered themselves back together and pressed on. Some suffered in silence. Some had no difficulty -- but for a handful of these that would change. If you didn't get removed by that initial purge of the wrong-minded, you didn't have a choice but to persist. Her Holiness's dictum was that no worthy person, upon entry, shall be let exit freely (this could well be the Pontiff's declaration, yet we were as distant from him as a polar bear is to penguins, we do not even know his name, the verification of that idea was unimaginable to us). Nothing short of death would free you from your duties.
Not to say that we did not try.
