A
Ramble About Museum Fremen
In
Frank Herbert's Dune series, the Fremen are the semi-native
inhabitants of the planet Arrakis, aka "Dune". They
descended from escaped "Buddhislamic" slaves that took
refuge on the extremely water scarce, harsh world. It was here that
they first encountered the awesome and terrible dominance of
Shai-Hulud, the great sandworms, and here that they became
involuntarily addicted to the “Spice Melange” which was ever
present around them in the air, the food, and the sands beneath their
feet. It was the residue of Shai-Hulud that would prove to be a
powerful, consciousness expanding drug that could grant visions and
open possibilities of existence. Those first escaped slaves suffered
immensely in their new environment, but that suffering forced them to
adapt themselves if they wanted to survive.
Over
a period of ten thousand years, the harsh desert environment and its
“peculiarities” transformed them into a fanatically religious,
incredibly tough, spice addicted, survivalist race of people that
learned to treasure water to the point that they would even distil it
from their dead so as not to lose one drop from their tribal stash.
Led by their messiah, Paul Muad’Dib, they not only took their
planet back from those who would exploit it and them, but they
conquered the known universe planet by planet, bringing each one into
subjection to Muad’Dib’s rule.
Later
on, thousands of years later, Dune has been transformed into a
paradise world through environmental terraforming. Sandworms are more
and more confined to mere pockets of what had been a worldwide
desert. Water runs freely on the planet’s surface and rain falls
from the sky in a normal water cycle, something that the Fremen could
never have imagined. The human-sandworm hybrid God Emperor Leto, the
son of Muad’Dib, has maintained communities of what are called
"museum Fremen" in tribute to his own ancestry as well as
the planet's.
Except,
the museum Fremen are barely shadows of what their ancestors were.
They are little more than actors in a carefully controlled, barely
recognizable recreation. Water pools in muddy puddles in their
villages. They talk much of their personal honor, but do nothing
about it. Their villages tend to be filthy. Their religious devotion
is hollow and rehearsed, and their ancestor' s spice addiction is
long a thing of the past. They couldn't conquer anything. When a man
with memories of what Muad’Dib’s Fremen were encounters them, he
is appalled and their leader appeals to him for help in recovering
their true heritage.
To
me, this is the best illustration of Christians in the first two or
three centuries, and the "museum Christians" of the
churches today. The museum Fremen didn't know the first thing about
being a Fremen, and quite frankly the museum Christians of today
don't know the first thing about being a Christian. The Fremen's eyes
glowed a deep solid blue with the ever present spice, whereas the
museum Fremen's eyes were the normal white with different colored
irises. In the same way, the ancient Christians were so energized by
Grace that healings, exorcisms, and miracles were common. Today,
museum Christians have to resort to excuses or staged illusions when
the charismata are brought up, and any real evidence of these powers
being displayed is explained away or vehemently opposed because it is
from the “wrong denomination”. We lost the blue from our eyes
long ago. We squander the water in a way our spiritual ancestors
never did.
Is
it really any wonder then people are leaving the churches? We can
only BS our way through it for so long before people begin to realize
we don't really know what we're talking about. It is so bad that the
written accounts of the Christians from the first three centuries
(and many of the Saints of the following) are often dismissed as
fairy tales because they don’t match with modern experience. When
our lives don't match what's written of theirs, people will cry foul
and rightly so.
So
then, what do we do? How do we return to our roots? By imitating
those whose lives do match theirs. By studying those people living
and dead. And by going back to what made those ancient Christians
Christians. For the Fremen it was water scarcity and spice
saturation. For the ancient Christians it was community, voluntary
poverty, and Jesus saturation (John 15:4-7). It's when these things
are removed from our lives that we exist only as a shadow of what
was.
