Sisters and brothers! Comrades in faith! We who have carried through flame and thunder, not for our own sake, but for God and the Kingdom to come! Listen, please, to this prayer!
Great and magnificent are the rewards of true faith, and to behold them is to see the strength of God. Where are those who invoked the Rites in falsity? Where are those who stood in the path of Prophet and cloaked their evil in the veils of orthodoxy? Where are those who raised their hands in prayer, even though they were caked in the blood of God's own? We know and see: they are obliterated. Great and magnificent are the rewards of true faith!
But let us not be mistaken, and let us not be misled: a miracle is divine, but is not a gift to be taken and hoarded. It is not a treasure we can hold in the coffers of our work. A miracle is the fruit that grows in the orchard of rite and prayer, of piety and of hope. A miracle is an act of grace, and a challenge to us all to tend to it, for the work of faith is not a lightning that strikes from an open sky, and a thunder that rings once and then is silent.
We have tended to this orchard together, arm in arm against evil, arm in arm for the sake of justice and the Kingdom to come. They have said: you plant on a barren soil! But with nothing but faith, we dug in, until under the rubble and ruin of our past, we have found fertile soil and planted the roots of miracle there. Why have we done it? For God, and for each other, for all who have been banished and exiled, for all who have been left out of the house of orthodoxy and branded a schismatic, a witch, a woman, a rebel. We toiled with them, and we toiled as them, and we were rewarded.
I pray that we remember the doctrine to which we all adhere, which is in the sayings of Guru Myriam: that the world will take on its true shape only once we have changed it already. Some of you may think that this is the demand to reach always for more, and with militant piety march against all that is evil, no matter how far it rests, and what we leave behind. But even if we cut off all the heads of the evil's hydra now, they will all surely grow back three-fold. The Kingdom to come will not be declared from the Heavenly Mount, nor will it be sealed by the Patriarch's bull. The true shape of the world will not be writ in flame and ruin of the old. No, I tell you this: it will come from change that is real, and that is small, as small as the seeds of faith we have planted in the unlikeliest soil. From it, it grows, and we already see it bloom and reward us with miracles. Us, the discarded children of God, the banished and the schismatic. I tell you this: the Kingdom to come is here right now, in our rite and prayer. It is in the Gunpowder Eucharist, and in the hymns of the Ravs of Labor. It is in the angelforms of Ma'On, and in the work-litanies of sailors who raised against evil and saw who their true kin is. The Kingdom to come is the miracle of our orchard, small now, but growing with each soul sheltered. And the Kingdom places a demand on us that we tend to it, and to each other.
I pray that we remember that, and that we tend to what we have planted. Let us not march with the mighty of the world: they will march themselves. Let us take care of the Kingdom to come as it grows, not expect it to be given in a flash. Great and magnificent are the rewards of true faith, but great still is the humble work that makes them grow.
[X] Direct our attention to expanding the new order, and keeping pious those who purport to defend freedom. [Improved relations with Makabam, Kedesh, the Sailors Karaban, and Ma'on. Preferred option of Gunpowder Eucharist and Ravs of Labour].
