Monday 28 August 2023

Today Is...St Moses the Black Day

Back in his day blacks were treated by some as sub human and a lower order than the whites (obviously that view has not changed much for some over the next 1700 years) so not unexpectedly he went off the rails sometimes and he was considered a bad apple on account of all the murdering and robbing he got up to which is exactly why he lost his first job as the slave of a government official in Egypt.
In order to make ends meet he became the leader of a gang of bandits who would roam the Nile Valley, spreading terror and violence and as he was a large, imposing figure, not many people resisted when he waved my knife in their face and demanded their money.
On one occasion a man caught him making a getaway which annoyed him immensely so he ran back but seeing a huge man waving a knife screaming that he was going to kill him gave him a clue of what was about to happen and he had the sense to make a run for it to fetch the authorities so instead he killed four of his sheep and legged it.
Obviously, a big man ugly enough to make an onion cry covered in sheep's blood wasn't going to be that hard to find so he hid out amongst some monks in a colony in the desert and they fed him and accepted him so he asked to join them, became a Christian, was baptised and joined the monastic community.
Some years later a group of thieves wanted to rob the monastery where they were living but he caught them off guard and singlehandedly beat them all to a pulp and dragged their bloodied bodies to the chief monk to ask what to do because after-all it wasn’t a monkly thing to kill them and the head of the monastery said to forgive them and send them away, which surprised the robbers so much that they all apologised, converted and became monks too.
His death at 75 was a noble act, another group of bandits attacked the monastery and the brothers wanted to defend themselves, but he told them to retreat rather than take up weapons and he would stay behind to fight off the warriors so he stood there alone and prayed for Gods arse kicking help.
Now God might be good but he isn't that good because a 75 year old man screaming 'come on then, you want a piece of me' to a horde of tooled up warriors ended about as well as you imagine.

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