Stand your Ground Come Heaven or High Water
A Backwards Quarter Million Mile Stairway to the Past - Water Walkers Need Not Apply!
Sophia: Martin, welcome. You carry the stillness of a mountain that refuses to be moved. Tell me, what is it to stand so completely alone, rooted only in your own inner knowing?
Martin: (His gaze is steady, yet troubled.) It is both a great solace and a profound burden, Sophia. There is a point in life where the path of the world diverges utterly from the path your conscience dictates. To turn back, to deny that singular, insistent voice within—that is the true danger. It would be an annihilation worse than any decree man could issue. There is no other ground for me to stand on; my entire being depends on this final refusal to compromise what I know to be the essential truth.
Sophia: So, the steps you take are not for the future or for the crowd, but only to honor the echoes of your deepest past—the principles that formed you. Many seek to walk on water, to defy nature and consequence, but you simply chose to walk your line, no matter how steep or solitary the climb.
I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God [Goodness]. Amen [Over and Out].
— Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Martin: Exactly. There is no miracle or divine intervention I seek to save me from the consequence of my conviction. I’ve stepped off the comfortable road paved by others and am ascending a difficult, personal staircase backward, as it were, into the fundamentals of my belief. Those who expect an easy, miraculous crossing—the "water walkers"—will find no kinship in this. I must simply follow the steep track laid down by my own fidelity, and trust that my strength will be sufficient for the journey.
Sophia: And that, Martin, is the most profound kind of faith: the faith not in an easy escape, but in the unwavering rectitude of your own heart. It is the wisdom that understands the only safe harbor is the one built on personal truth.
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