A Ramble About Museum Fremen

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.