open letter to brad olson

It comes to me that the cross
upon which the hero willingly crucifies himself
consists of the horizontal arm of historicity
and the vertical pole of the axis mundi, the tree of life.
Our present age seems stuck on the horizontal,
on some (false) sense of a liner progression,
an eternal march to nowhere
where since every army marches on its stomach
we will eventually consume our supply,
ignoring the eternal supply of the vertical.
The hero consciously or intuitively knows this
and insists that not only his arms be nailed
outstretched on the yoke of human endeavor
but that he also be affixed to the vertical
and suspended between heaven and earth
a halfway house between the two realms
where he can act as messenger, merger, and savior of god and man.
The crucial spot is the heart area
where the vertical and horizontal meet,
the place of Presence, the place that we as a people have forgotten
in our hurried transition from the Pagan to the Rational.
It seems to me that orthodox Christianity
represents the horizontal arm
with its emphasis on the historical Jesus
and orthodox Islam represents the vertical
with its emphasis on living in the Imaginal.
No wonder these orthodoxies clash.
The saving grace is that mystics or those of inner illumination
of whatever religion see the same Splendor
that often goes by the name of Love
and not only accept but become the whole entire Cross.