How can you
blame me when
you made 
me this way.
You gave me
free will, and knew
what I would do.
You predestined me
to lose.
I didn't choose
these terrible 
wings of destiny;
you did it for me.
I wanted to be
Michael or Gabriel instead
of Lucifer.
I know there needed
to be a war,
and an enemy,
but why me?
I despise this
black soul.

thomas-w-case

advocatus diaboli (Devil's Advocate)

Jun 6, 2026

June 2026

2026

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seranaea

-
yep, just enough will to
go crashing into each
others destinies,

kinda wish i was 
just a cloud...

removed.u849271

lurepot

melan-of-innocent

Dear Thomas, the richest LOVEz seeds germinate in dark/black..!

LoriJonesMcCaffery

It takes a very sharp eye to see into pure blackness and lament for what isn't there.  A noteworthy write.

anaisvionet

You're fishing in deep waters here. Through direct address, repetition, imagery and rhetorical questioning, you invite the reader to reflect on free will vs. predestination. 
The question as old as questioning itself. It's part of Greek philosophy (Stoics and the Epicureans), Judaism (God's foreknowledge), Christianity (Augustine of Hippo & John Calvin) and Islam ("Qadr" in the Quran).
The brevity intensifies the emotional impact, the creator's response is unspoken, further enhancing the ambiguity. 
The speaker as Lucifer - exists purely in Christian theology. While Buddhism has 'mara' and Islam has 'shaytan,' those are generic terms for devils and evil spirits - not individuals - thanks psychology (religious studies class). 
Still, you tread water well, while not actually walking on it. &#128579;

removed.u685248

Love this one so, so much! I was literally just thinking both about the canonization process for declaration of saints and how to square that biggest of all philosophical question assuming that is a deity, if someone knows if you're going to do something before you do it does that mean, especially in the most critical of moments, and strangely, I don't know if you've experienced it, but those moments when all of a sudden it feels like your choices really are not your own anymore, when everything path becoming an inevitability out of pure circumstance, with any of the different things that could be done all having terrible outcomes, when I feel like I'm suddenly on rails, being led here or there by fate and a million little decisions and tongue-twisters that all led up to that instant in time.

And more literally in a way, several life-time's ago I almost made the decision to become a diocesan priest, spent a year in formation and brushing up on every subject I needed to (lots of reading) so I could go right to getting an M.Div. After the rather grueling process of spiritual formation I waited to see if 'd be approved or not and had when of those pivotal moments where it very much felt both like I was facing an advocatus diaboli myself and as it turned out, and on predestination, another incident that I am haunted up, how any God even through passive will could allow to happen. Argh, this is already too long of a message, and yeah, it should be about your words, not all about me me me me me, but you don't seem to mind my long-ass comments, so I'm just going with it, on rails.

Just on the priesthood thing, finally the day of the big meeting, like a gladiator waiting for that most critical thumb's up or thumb's down. In the meeting, yes, I was accepted by him, and my the seminary I'd applied to, on rails now, that moment of pivotal choice and destiny, this was something that was a massive change in my lifestyle, etc. Elated, but brought up to only come crashing down, hard. Peter, my archbishop, sprung it on me so fucking casually, too, and right at the end of this 2  hours meeting about everything you could imagine, "And, of course, we'll provide a very generous annuity for Brittany [my then 4 year-old daughter], so you'll never have to worry about how she is doing, and when she's at the right age, we'll pay for her education at any university in the world, and as much education as she's interesting in...and we'll  make sure she gets into any school with the pull we have".

I was sweating and panicking at the implications of what I thought I'd just heard, so clarified, "So are you saying I'd never get to see my daughter again??". I was wondering if this was some sort of cruel Abraham-sacrificing-Issac sort of test, but no, it was no test, he was serious. I argued, well, what about Father. X, who has a wife and children, who converted over from the Anglican Church, or Fr. Y, the most celebrated priest in the archdiocese, who became one after a life with a wife and kids and being a dentist, who entered the priesthood after his wife passed away tragically early in life, and what about (in my mind) the entire fecking concept of forgiveness and redemption the faith rests on??

But, no, there was no getting out of this impossible choice, "It isn't a matter of any of those things; we have older parishioners that just would not understand a priest having a little girl come stay with him every 2nd weekend, etc., it would be an invitation to scandal [something I've grown to understand is true, if unfair]". Me: "Well isn't that just #%#$ing great, why the #$^$ didn't you think this just may have been maybe a kind of critical #$%#ing piece of information to tell me before finding out I just wasted #@R%@%ing the last year and a half of my life for nothing FFS?!??". I lost all control, and he was shocked, he wasn't used to having people in his face and cursing and extremely angry and upset, and he was, like, mystified at why I possibly could be upset, "Brittany isn't an infant Peter, she starts kindergarten in the fall, if I just completely abandoned her she would be so scarred for her entire life by that choice, so where does that undeniable fact fit in? And you told me at the beginning of this entire process that you were excited because you needed someone with a background in administration and I'd been in a non-liturgical role anyways training up under Monsignor Z in succession planning for when he retires, so...?".

And the answer back infuriated me, but it was part of the entire thing, blind obedience was part of the whole thing, one of the vows to be taken, but I was trying to have a conversation based on realities, man to man, human being to human being, but instead, "Jason, you know that obedience to any superiors is part of entering any holy orders, and I thought with your background you'd be used to not questioning them". He kind of had me there, but I just thought in that moment, so every choice or bad decisions or non-choice or good decision let me to this spot I'm in, my heart getting pulled in two completely opposite directions....the advocatus diaboli, was it him or me in this situation playing that role, predestination, well, isn't this just fecking great, there is no bloody way I'm abandoning my child, especially because I was the only semi-stable influence in her life at that point, but I really felt that calling still.

"Well, this is an impossible choice, and going to Oxford or Cambridge or the Sorbonne, what if she isn't even interested in that when she's ready, or school at all, and this feels like a bribe, and a concession. Thanks a good #$#-#^#^^ for wasting so much of my time, truly, and y'know, next time you're going to spring some b$#%-s$$^$ on someone like this, have some common #$^#$^# human decency and be up-front with them from day @##%%ing one instead of waiting, rather deviously in the truest sense of the word, until they're so emotionally invested that it becomes a hardest decision that it every should, because ambushing some like me with this s$%& long after the time to have this discussion is an emotional manipulation, and again, a year and a half of my life that was a complete waste [though it wasn't, that time changed me for the better] of my time and yours. Have a nice life.], I storm out, OK, so now what and OMG, what did I just say in there, and what was I possibly thinking in the way I said it.

And I know with hindsight it was all for the best, I think I'd have made a good one, I'd have written homilies that would have well, bygones. And I know becoming a priest, it just wasn't for m, I love swearing too much, lol, and the only reason in the first place was I was looking for some personal redemption, or a penance to try to make up for past sins, and I wouldn't have found any, and holy orders are about service, not what you get out of it, much like the military in a lot of ways.

So, no regrets now, and no malice at Peter, but reading the poem, swooooossshh, all  of those old feeling came flooding back *hard*! Even after my making peace with it all, being grateful for  that year and some where I really learned not just about theology, philosophy [that has helped me in life a lot, Kierkegaard has been like the fatherly guidance I never had in a way], Greek & Hebrew, canon law, but more than anything else having an awesome spiritual director where we went deep into parts of my soul that, well, into those spots covering scar tissue, tearing the scabs clean off and deep diving not about the pain, not around the pain, but right into the pains headlong, and after enough times knowing you always come out the other end eventually.

Thank you for handing me a guidebook for this stroll down memory lane about a single hour where the entire direction of my life, stuck on those rails, hinged on a single decision that would have been monumentally life changing for at least two people, a daughter and her father, and where I felt like someone else was suddenly driving the bus of my life, so good choices, yet again, just picking the least harmful of either choice for all involved, where I know either I or my archbishop were playing the devil's advocate, though I still don't know which one, maybe it was us both. Awesome, I don't think about that day much at all, it still stings, after having some bad stuff happen, I already felt a big abandoned by the big guy in the Penthouse office in the clouds, and this kind of, wrongly, solidified it for me, He just wants nothing to do with me, fine, I will no longer want anything to do with Him. which only led to misery on my part, but that, too, was it all decided for me? Does foreknowledge actually directly and completely imply a lack of choices to be made?

I still wrestle that, or more rightly, it wrestles me, and I still can't find that answer, and I *need* to find that answer, or feel I do, to make sense of those critical on-rails moments in life, and in reading this, thinking of that day, and two other life-changing days, I think maybe I've come to, I will never be able to find a satisfactory answer to those questions, so maybe it's times to just put those burdens down and accept that maybe in some situations where there is no right of wrong in them, just decisions made like we all have where we did what we did, and we just need to live, right or wrong, with the consequences, and trust there is a bigger plan beyond our capacity for comprehension.

So thank you for lending me the guidebook of your insights, it wasn't nothing, that's for #$#^ sure, and sorry for the novel. This is art at it's best for me, something that has the capacity to help the reader move on, or make sense of something still vexing them  25 years on.

oldpoetMK

A powerful write Thomas...so deep the complexity

assassin_Official

removed.-6fdw

this one makes me think to be wise about the choices  
I've made and regretted , now I just simply make better ones , excellent writing big brother

kenpepiton

Something in me wishes to break this very mythconcept of angels and their will to be otherwise... and you may have
provoked me to defend the shiny thing unwilling to lie.