Remember that tree will die. That flower will wilt. Beauty's natural tendency is towards decay. Your tree will no doubt supplant the soil with nutrients upon which new, other plants will feed and grow beautiful, but for them, your tree had to die. It is, of course, the natural order of things. However, that system isn't worthy of the term "beautiful."

Over time, the leaves would turn the rich colors of autumn, fall, and dry into the brown blanket that gives a walk through the forest its pleasant crunching sound. The leaves would nourish the soil, and the tree would be alive. Such would be beauty. The leaves would be lost, but new leaves would spring forth from the bearer in the way a cell may die that the animal may live and flourish. The death of the cells of the tree would allow for the tree to grow further and for other plants to sprout within its shade. Such would be beauty.

In this world though, beauty doesn't last. The mountains over which the sun falls, giving birth to the magnificent sunsets seen in photographs (or, if one is lucky, "real" life), will crumble. The death of their beauty is simply a matter of time, and in that way they are significant of other beauties your God gave you.

Reflect on that. The almighty benevolent God has given his children untold beauty, as well as the promise that it will die, and in all likelihood sooner than the mountains. Enjoy it while it lasts, because your Father loves his children enough to make sure they can take comfort in the fact that he won't allow them pleasure for too long.

Wiser than I have considered that God is neither good nor evil, that He simply is. What are the traits usually identified with Him? By those who worship, he is the benevolent, wise, omnipotent, just Father who created the world for Adam and who saved the Holy and who proved his might before the Egyptians. (I speak of course of the Christian God, primarily because I was born and raised and am currently living in a Christian society. I find the beliefs of many other faiths much more agreeable.) Those who condemn God attribute to him such traits as cruelty, apathy towards his "children," stupidity, hypocrisy, ad nauseum.

What deity could be placed upon an altar created as a composite of both of these sets? What beast could be both benevolent and malicious, wise and stupid, just and apathetic? What beast could be omnipotent, capable of anything, both creator and destroyer? Look upon the face of God and your own features will stare back at you. Anything one man likes, another somewhere hates it. Any obvious solution will become immediately apparent to some and forever escape the comprehension of others.

Anything a man can imagine he can create, given enough time. Centuries ago, communication across the world was a slow and dangerous, if not impossible undertaking. Now nobody gives a second thought to firing off an email to somebody he's never even met. Similarly, anything a man can create, he can destroy. Countless examples of this exist, from the world of computer enthusiasts who delight in taking apart the systems and applications created by somebody else to the world of radicals who can destroy some of the largest buildings in the world in the span of hours. The human God needs no prayer, no worship, simply by being you are a part of him. Your personal choices, no matter that you or anyone else might think them "good" or "evil" are your religion, and should be trusted. After all, if you do not trust yourself, why trust an entity only alive through hearsay?

Where does the individual fit in among the deity of humanity? That is perhaps something nobody can answer except that individual. I for example, have begun to strongly suspect that my place is perhaps twofold in that I aid in creation and preservation (those being to me sides of the same coin) and to aid in destruction.

I can not yet say with any certainty of specificity how I aid in the creative side of things, but I suspect that to a degree, all of us do. We all try to maintain and be beneficial to what we can in the world, from maintaining friendships to volunteering in various community organizations. In a personal scope, as I've stated, I can't place myself into a niche yet on the "good" side of things because I don't think I've got enough details to do so accurately. All I can say is that I get a feeling sometimes as if some of my troubles are ultimately endured so that others may have an easier time accomplishing whatever they are trying to do, and I suppose I can count my role in easing others who create as a hand in creation, though I do know that I will need to further figure out my role, whether or not it consists entirely of that.

My role in destruction, I do feel I have a firmer grasp of. I, Catalyst, as well as helping others create, do my own share of accelerating the natural decay of beauty, despite the fact that I can't bring myself to completely enjoy or even accept the role. Whatever I touch seems soiled. It surprises me that I can't kill flowers with a caress or shrivel oak trees with a glare. I don't completely understand why I don't leave sand wherever I step. Humans, though, I do seem to have an effect on. Innocence, for those of you who know me, is something I value highly, and I do also believe that ignorance is part and parcel of innocence. Those of you who know me know as well that I tolerate ignorance rather poorly. Unfortunately, I have yet to see the decline of the latter without the destruction of the former, and even more unfortunately I have yet to be able to prevent myself from shattering innocence in those with whom I consort. Indeed I have yet to be able to preserve innocence in anybody by avoiding them.

As much as the fact that my role in conservation is an impassive one by which it seems I shoulder more heavily certain problems grates me, it shatters me to see the death of beauty I cause merely by being present somewhere. A wonderful landscape, an idyllic forest, both would be ruined would I try to appreciate them simply by the profanty of my presence. A beautiful girl might be eye-catching for that split second before I realize that my attention has turned her into a normal person and destroyed what made her beautiful, and knowing I did that to her bears on me more heavily than anything else I can imagine.

But such is the way of the world. Beauty tarnishes with time. You will die someday. I will die someday. But while we are here we are hands of god, agents of humanity, champions of the beastial nature.