Jadeinne Sparrow: Soaring High

MORIN THE MORON

In a small, wooden house at the streets of Cardenas lived a little girl called Morin. She was in her fourth grade at a small, Catholic school which was only a few steps away from their home. Her father and mother were very much thankful she had made it to the stage, because at the first few years that she was sent to school, she learned very little in class. Much worse, she found it hard to cope with her subjects, and the only thing her teachers could do to let her pass was to give her the passing grade.
At school, her classmates used to gather around her and follow her everywhere she went, mocking her continuously, chanting:
“Morin the moron, brain is like a roach,
One plus one equals ‘I-don’t-know!’
English, Science, Mathematics,
She can’t even understand the basics!”
And the chant would be followed by an echo of laughter that was sharp enough to tear her heart, making her slump down the ground and cry aloud, while her cruel little classmates stoned her with crumpled sheets of paper.
“Serves you right, you moron!” they would say. “You do not have any place here!”
And she would hear another continuous chant:
“Use-your-head! Use-your-head!”
It was very difficult for her to learn, although she did the best she could studying at home. But she did not believe she would always be that ‘Morin the Moron’ her classmates used to call her everyday.
Her young heart recognized God Almighty as the very source of her strength. She used to cry to Him though she could not see Him. She used to share with Him her joys and tears, and laughter and fears, and blessings and trials, and all other walks she had led in life, but not in the way their school obliged them to. She treated the unseen Being like a friend, talking to Him the way she was. With God in her heart, she believed that she could surpass all hardships she could encounter in life.

The Gift That had no name

Even though she did not learn as fast as her classmates did, Morin had an ability that only a few people possess. She could feel beyond what her five senses perceive. She could sense if there was something bad about to happen. But since Morin had always been thought as the one who could not even use her head, no one would believe in her.
In one of their classes, she started to get restless, driving her concentration away from the subject. She was trembling suddenly and her forehead would let out droplets of sweat, like her face was being watered. Her teacher noticed that behavior, walked to her seat, and touched her dampened hair.
“Morin, are you alright?” the teacher asked.
Morin shook as she answered, stammering, “I can see an earthquake coming… Teacher, there is an earthquake coming!”
One of her boy classmates stood and with full force, threw a crumpled scrap of paper on her back and said, “Hey, classmates, did you hear Morin the Moron? She said there will be an earthquake! Huh! Not only she is a roach-head! She is mad!”
Her classmates agreed and stoned her with crumpled papers too, creating another chant that said Morin was mad. The teacher tried stopping the class, told Morin to go to the clinic, and continued the discussion. A few minutes later, they started to feel that their room was shaking. They trembled.
Then, everything swayed from side to side, dragging them all down from left to right, and from right to left. The teacher told them to run out in the open field and lie face down on the surface. That was what they did, but as they ran, one of their classmate was left in the room, and there was no more chance of saving him.
A lot of students were wounded by that earthquake. Morin was right, but then, they have all forgotten that the sign came from her.

The Black Smoke

After the earthquake, Morin started to see strange images creeping around. One afternoon, when she walked home after the class, she suddenly stopped at the school ground, staring at a huge tree some distances from her. To an ordinary eye, there was really nothing to be worried about. But never to Morin.
She walked closer and stopped at about two spans away from the tree. There, she was able to see black, odorless smoke, curling up in the air. She circled the tree, but as she walked to follow the shade of smoke, it disappeared. In its place laid a beautiful case of pencils she wished to have. She knelt to take a closer look at it. Indeed, it was new, shiny, and beautiful.
“Oh, what a nice case of pencil!” she said, “I wonder who owns this one.”
And she drew her fingers to touch the pencil case. But as soon as the tip of her fingers touched the plastic, she felt something like a vacuum cleaner, sucking some force out of her. She quickly pulled her hand away, shaking it like she had touched something hot.

The Coming of Temptation

That night, Morin sat at the back doorstep of their house and stayed silent, closing her eyes. She let her heart wait silently until she feels the presence of the Lord. She had to tell Him about that image she saw the afternoon and to ask Him why she was seeing those things. And though she knew she would not get an immediate answer, she believed God would hear her voice in silence.
It was not too long since she closed her eyes, but then, she started to feel she was not alone. She opened her eyes and turned her head, trying to see where that kind of feeling came from. She stood and hopped down the two wooden steps of their backdoor. When she stepped on the dried leaves and twigs, it created a cracking sound.
Oh God, she thought with questioning eyes. Her heart started to beat so rapidly that she drew her palms to her chest. What am I feeling? Why am I feeling that there is something strange out here?
Seeing no one around, she turned back to their house with her eyes on the ground. She walked her way to the backdoor, bringing that strange feeling along with her.
A sound of breathing wind went through her ears, so she quickly turned her head to look. Right before her was the same black smoke she saw behind the tree at the school. That time, it showed its fullness to her. The thickest part of the smoke, which Morin thought as the body of that presence looked like a huge bat, floating on air yet without wings. Her eyes opened wide.
Her hand groped for the wall. She wanted to run, but the presence was so powerful she did not know if she would even have the strength to move her feet. In the end, she fell on the stair as the presence moved slowly to follow her.
“Who are you?” she asked, catching her breath.
“Do not fear,” echoed a deep, dark voice as it stopped before her. “You are Morin the Moron, people called.”
“I am Morin,” came her trembling answer, “Not a moron.”
The shade spoke again. “Do not fear.”
It stretched out two cloudy arms, and the smokes from its body started to curl up. Then, its thick mass started to mold into head, face, neck, shoulders, body, and legs. She covered her mouth when that huge mass of smoke was turned into a prince-like young man in a cloak dark as midnight, with eyes like mystery.
The young man drew his palms before her. Then, a thick smoke puffed out and in seconds, the smoke became a lovely, plastic doll.
“Take it,” he said, and gave her a smile.
Like what she felt about the case of pencil at the first sight of it, she wanted to take the doll. But the young man standing before her was a stranger. If there was anything she had learned from her parents in the past, that was not to take anything from the hands of strangers.
When she did not speak, the man turned the doll into a big, red, shining apple, that anyone who sees it would drool in hunger. He drew it close to her.
“Bite.”
She shook her head.
“My father and mother told me never to talk to strangers,” she said, as the beat of her heart slowed down.
“Do not fear,” he said, then took the apple to his mouth and had a bite. “I am here to help you.”
“Help me?”
He smiled. Then he raised the red apple to her and the part he had bitten slowly went back to its form like a being that never dies. Her eyes stared widely at him.
“This is knowledge. Take this and you will be the brightest child on earth.”
Morin wanted to get higher grades in class, but she could not achieve it no matter how hard she tried. She would only end up with thick clouds in her mind, blocking everything that she had to know. And if she would only take a bite from that apple, those clouds might disappear, and everything she had to learn, she could learn with ease. Everything she had to do, she could do beautifully without working hard at all.
The young man spoke again, “Eat this and all things that block your mind will be swept away like dust. And no one will ever call you moron anymore. No longer will they look down on you. You will stand above all of them and trample their heads the way they did to you. And when you stand above them, they will all bow to your feet and worship you.”
His last two words echoed in her mind, and out of the dream, she heard only one word, that all the trembles, fears, and unclear things she had at that time puffed out like a thin sheet of smoke…
God.

And the Fool gained Wisdom

Morin released a deep breath and faced the being who stood on the ground.
“Who are you?” she asked again, and she looked straight into his eyes.
“I am the servant of the rightful heir to the kingdom above.”
“Heir to the kingdom above? Are you not afraid of Jesus?”
Hearing Morin’s last words, the young man felt his thighs shaking, and that shake pulled him down to his knees and he screamed aloud. The apple he was holding rolled down the ground. He tried to get back to his feet and moved his crooked legs closer to her.
“You foolish child! Never dare say That Name again!” he commanded as his eyes sharpened at the little girl who watched him from the doorstep, “Or you will see your soul no more.”
Morin’s heart thumped beneath her chest again. But it did not last long, for she knew God’s eyes were on her that time.
“You mean, Jesus.”
She smiled. Again, the man fell on his knees and he cried out in pain, as his body shook on the ground like an earthworm sprinkled with grains of salt. Morin giggled happily at the sight of his suffering.
“Why do you keep believing in That Being?” he asked monstrously, “Have you seen Him? Have you talked to Him face to face? Has He answered all your prayers? Did He give you all that you have wished for?”
The young man crawled to get the red apple that rolled on the ground upon his first fall. Then he pulled himself up again.
“…While you have seen me clearly and I have shown you that I can give everything you wanted! I can give you a mind that no one in the world could ever surpass. I can give you wealth enough for you to live like a princess forever! I can even give you the power that I have!”
Morin stopped giggling then.
“I want to be wise,” she said, “I want to make my father and mother happy if I learn something in class and make my grades higher.”
“Then why would you refuse it?”
The young man resumed his place before her and offered the apple again. She rose and looked upward to meet the eyes of the young man who stood like a tower against the ground.
“Because I know they will not be happy to see me go up while I pull other people down.”
“Then you are not going to succeed easily,” he said as he gave her a mocking laugh. “Because you have the brains of a cockroach. The only thing you can do is to wish you will be wise without doing anything. And that is what I am offering you,” he bent down to see her face closely. “A piece of knowledge. And you will be the wisest above all men.”
“I am too young to be wise above all men,” she answered. “So I kept on trusting Jesus.”

God’s Grace upon Morin

Hearing the Name again, the young man growled, holding his painful head. But he kept himself from falling down.
And slowly, his handsome face changed. Red flames began to burn in his eyes, ugly veins started to ruin his young skin, claws began to grow from his skinny fingers, and fangs started to replace his small, white teeth. He tightened his hands around Morin’s small neck, and lifted her up in the air.
“I told you never to say That Name again! But because you are stubborn and disobeyed me, I am going to offer your soul to my master!”
And the creature let out a deep, dark, echo of laughter. Morin screamed aloud, crying out for help, as she struggled to escape from the tight hands around her. She called her father, her mother, but no one responded. She tried to scream again but no sound came out of her anymore. A small tear drew a line in her face.
She tried catching her breath, but it was too hard to do. Feeling helpless from the tight hands of the fierce creature, she cried out, “Save me, Lord Jesus! Save me!”
The moment she screamed those words, the hands that choked her neck dropped her faced down on the steps, and right before her eyes, she saw the creature growl in pain. Fire began to burst from its body and it hopped and hopped, rolled over the ground, trying to put out the blaze that would not go away. The fire grew bigger and bigger, burning the creature down until it all turned into ashes and vanished in the air.
She released a deep sigh.
At last, she thought, it is over. She stood and walked to the ground where the creature burned down to ashes. She bent her head and took her eyes to the surface, and saw no trace of the ashes everywhere.
She knew that it was God who saved her. She looked up the sky and saw the moon and the stars shining brightly, cheering for her victory. She smiled at the twinkle of the light, offering a silent prayer of gratitude to God.
“Thank you, Lord Jesus,” she said, “for saving me and for making me the wisest child above men.”