It is a Sunday morning. The first day of our week in some traditions is designated for mindful attention to divine reality, to put it plainly – for worship. The timing could not be better for a story, an ancient tale of exchange between humans (we clever dwarfs) and the “gods” who by comparison seem like giants.

The tale is several times longer than you will usually find here. Do make yourself comfortable. If you read this carefully, you will find it rewarding.

By chance should you have a acquaintance with Christianity, perhaps you have heard the saying, “the Lord works in mysterious ways,…” The principle held by every Christian believer is articulated variously at different points in the Bible. For example:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.  Isaiah 55:8-9

Our story goes to the heart of the mysterious-ways-of-God principle…

We clever dwarfs,
with all our will and aims,
are interfered with, knocked down,
and very often crushed to death by those ultra-stupid giants,
the accidents,

—but in spite of this we should not like to be deprived
of the fearful poetry of their proximity,

for these monsters very often make their appearance
when life in the spider’s web of definite aims has
become too tiresome or too anxious for us,
and they sometimes bring about a divine diversion
when their hands for once
tear the whole web in pieces,

—not that these irrational beings ever
intend to do what they do, or even observe it.

But their coarse and bony hands rend our web
as if it were thin air.

Moira
was the name given by the Greeks
to this realm of the incalculable and of sublime and eternal limitedness;
and they set it round their gods like a horizon
beyond which they could neither see nor act,
—with that secret defiance of the gods which
one meets with in different nations;
the gods are worshipped,
but a final trump card
is held in readiness to play against them.

The case of Christianity…
Christianity commanded its
disciples to worship in the dust
the spirit of power, and to kiss the very dust.

It gave the world to understand
that this omnipotent “realm of stupidity”
was not so stupid as it seemed,
and that we, on the contrary, were stupid
when we could not perceive
that behind this realm
stood God Himself:
He who, although fond
of dark, crooked and wonderful ways,
at last brought everything
to a “glorious end.”

This new myth of God,
who had hitherto been mistaken
for a race of giants or Moira,
and who was now
Himself the Spinner and Weaver
of webs and purposes
even more subtle than those of our own intellect
—so subtle, indeed, that they appear
to be incomprehensible and even unreasonable
—this myth was so bold a transformation
and so daring a paradox
that the over-refined ancient world could not resist it, however
extravagant and contradictory the thing seemed.

…In more modern times,
indeed, the doubt has increased
as to whether the slate that falls from the roof
is really thrown by “Divine love,”
and mankind again harks back to the old romance
of giants and dwarfs.

Let us learn then, for it is time we did so,
that even in our supposed separate domain
of aims and reason
the giants likewise rule.
And our aims and reason
are not dwarfs, but giants.

And our own webs
are just as often and as clumsily rent
by ourselves as by the slate.

And not everything is purpose
that is called purpose,
and still less is everything will
that is called will.

And if you come to the conclusion,
“Then there is only one domain, that of stupidity and hazard?”
it must be added that possibly there is only one domain,
possibly there is neither will nor aim,
and we may only have imagined these things.

Those iron hands of necessity
that shake the dice-box of chance continue their game indefinitely:
hence, it must happen
that certain throws
perfectly resemble
every degree
of appropriateness and good sense.

It may be that our own voluntary acts and purposes
are merely such throws,
and that we are too circumscribed and vain
to conceive our extremely circumscribed state!

that we ourselves shake the dice-box with iron hands,
and do nothing in our most deliberate actions
but play the game of necessity.

Possibly! To rise beyond this “possibly”
we should indeed have been guests in the Underworld,
playing at dice and betting with Proserpine
at the table of the goddess herself.

The Dawn Of Day by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by J. M. Kennedy, aphorism 130