The Terpretor

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Posted by Martin Biddiscombe on 1998-03-07
Let me tell you a story :-)

Many years ago, in the land of Missin, lived the Terpretors. They were
a largely peacable race, with one notable exception, which I shall
come to in a minute. By and large, the Terpretors shared a common
religion, which they considered to be central to their lives. This was
unusual for peoples of that time, but that's another story.

At the heart of the Terpretian religion lay the claim that individuals
could develop a personal relationship with the Creator-Sustainer. Now,
as is the way of all things, it was not as simple as that; and while I
don't want to bore you with the details, I can tell you that the
Terpretors of Missin had, over the years, set down their beliefs about
the Creator-Sustainer, the way to enter into this personal
relationship, and the effect such a relationship would have of the
lifestyle of an individual, into a great Tome. The authors and
compilers of the Tome, which had taken many lifetimes to complete,
had come from all walks of life, and this gave the book a unique
relevance to each Tepretor, whatever his background. But I digress.

It was generally accepted that the women who had written the Tome -
and there has been a lot of speculation as to why it was so female
dominated, despite the presence of a number of spiritually
enlightened men recorded within its pages - were in some real sense
guided and drawn on in their work by the Creator-Sustainer, although
there is a range of Tepretian opinion as to how closely the women were
guided. This difference is one of the factors that lies behind the
notable exception to the peace in Missin which I alluded to at the
beginning.

The other key factor, and, as is so often the way, those who held
extreme views with regard to the first were also those in whom the
polarisation of views on the second factor was most clearly seen, is
the degree to which Terpretors believed that the detailed lifestyle
teachings of the Tome should be followed. All acknowledged that many
things had changed in the intervening years since the Tome was
written, but the difference in opinion lay in the extent to which
the book was believed to be a product of its time, and the extent
to which it was believed to be setting out timeless principles of
lifestyle mangement.

So there you have the background to the dispute which had so
uncharacteristically shattered the peace the Terpretors were used to
in Missin. And the nature of the dispute?

      Is it acceptable for a Terpretor, or anyone come
      to that, to eat the core of an apple or not?

Arguments had been raging bitterly over this issue for many years.
Those Terpretors who believed in the stonger form of Creator-Sustainer
guidance of the Tome pointed to a number of passages which condemned
the eating of apple cores. On the other hand, the Tepretors who
believed that the Creator-Sustainer's leading of the Tome authors and
compilers was less expicit, argued that when those particular passages
were written, there were very good reasons for not eating apple cores,
but that those reasons had, by and large, passed away, and that it
wasn't the eating of apple cores of themselves that was condemned, but
that the attitudes that would have accompanied the eating of apple
cores in the circumstances those authors would have been familiar with
were certainly incompatible with a Terpretor's relationship with the
Creator-Sustainer. Similarly, those who believed that the Tome was
very much a book born out of the times in which it was written pointed
to the significant changes in Tepretian society since the passages
were penned, reaching the same conclusion as those who believed in the
weaker form of Tome-author guidance.

Not only had disputes raged between Terpretian philosophers from the
various -isms, but the bitterness had spilled over into day-to-day
relationships between Terpretors. Many of those who believed in
explicit guidance and continuing relevance simply couldn't see how
a Terpretor who believed that it was all right to eat apple cores, and
not only believed but even practised apple core eating, could possibly
claim to be developing their relationship with the Creator-Sustainer
in a way which She would find pleasing.

While it was undeniably true that some apple core eaters weren't
developing their relationship with the Creator-Sustainer
appropriately, the same could be said of some apple core leavers.
However, many of the apple core eating Terpretors genuinely believed
that they were acting in a manner commensurate with the development of
their personal relationship with the Creator-Sustainer, since they had
reached the conclusion, perhaps with difficulty, that those passages
in the Tome which spoke against apple core eating were being
misapplied by the militant apple core leavers.

Unfortunately, the land of Missin was completely devastated by a
series of natural distasters (you may be interested to know that this
sequence of events took place in a manner foretold with uncanny
accuracy in the Tome as being the coming of moment of Reckoning), so
we shall never know whether the apple core eaters or the apple core
leavers were right...

Martin