The Dust is Where the Lost Are

A Discussion

The room was bare. Cold stone, cracked and uneven. A wooden table sat heavy in the middle, scarred at the corners like it had seen its share of arguments. No chairs. Just three men standing. Bent a little by the weight they carried. Not in robes of glory or laurels or light, but the kind of quiet that comes after too many winters. Firelight flickered from a distant hearth. Shadows moved across the walls like they were trying to forget something.

Jesus stepped forward first. Dirt still on his feet. Face open. Tired in a way that didn’t show up in sleep. He didn’t smile. Not because he didn’t want to, but because smiles belong to other rooms. Softer ones.

“You ask what the purpose of man is,” he said. “But you already know. You’ve just been trying to talk your way around it. It’s written in every broken back, every calloused hand, every widow’s long sigh into the night. Love. Serve. Give until it costs something. Die, if that’s what it takes.”

Plato shifted his weight. He didn’t scoff. He wasn’t that kind of man. But the tension in his eyes said he was ready to challenge the floor if it made the wrong claim.

“Love, yes,” he said. “But not the kind you drag through the mud. Not the kind that bleeds. There’s a higher love. The form of it. Perfect and unchanging. Beyond this... drama. We’re reflections down here. Echoes. The real world lies beyond this one.”

Marcus stepped closer to the fire. He didn’t speak quickly. His voice moved like old boots over wet stone. Tired, sure, but steady.

“And what good is it there?” he said. “Perfection is for the gods. Men live in the dust. They fight over salt. They die in ditches. Philosophy that can’t stand in blood isn’t philosophy. It’s a bedtime story for the safe and the lucky.”

Jesus nodded. “He’s right. The Word must become flesh. The divine has to suffer. If it doesn’t break with us, it doesn’t matter to us.”

Plato folded his arms. His mouth twitched. Not anger. Just frustration. The kind you get from trying to explain light to people who only know shadows.

“Why would what is eternal step into pain and rot?” he asked.

Jesus didn’t blink. “Because we do.”

Silence. The kind that only happens after something true has been said.

The fire cracked. The wind outside had teeth. It scraped the stone like it was trying to get in.

Marcus tilted his head. “You want to talk about God? Fine. Talk. Logos. Fire. Form. A man hanging on a tree. We all have our symbols. Maybe none of them are right. But purpose... purpose is simpler.”

He looked at both of them now. His face lit by fire, shadow, and the things he wouldn’t say.

“Purpose is to endure. With dignity. To wake up in a world that doesn’t care if you do, and do what’s right anyway. Even when you’re not sure what right is.”

Plato squinted at the fire. “But how can you act without knowing?”

“You don’t know,” Marcus said. “You guess. You feel it in your gut. You try. You hold your soul together while the world tells you to sell it. You fail. Then you try again.”

Jesus looked down at his hands. His palms were whole, but memory doesn’t heal like skin does.

“You don’t hold your soul together,” he said. “You give it away. That’s how you save it.”

Plato paced now. Short steps. Measured.

“You both speak in riddles. There’s more to man than pain. We are minds. We reason. We grasp the eternal. Why would we stay in the muck if we can rise?”

Jesus looked at him, then at the fire, then at the wall like it might finally answer him back.

“Because the muck is where the lost are,” he said.

Marcus chuckled, low. Not mocking. More like he’d heard the punchline before and it still hurt.

“That’s the rub, isn’t it? We all want out. But maybe the job was never to escape. Maybe it was to stay. To help the next one walk a little farther down the road.”

Plato stopped pacing. Thought about that. Really thought.

Then he nodded. Just a little.

The fire burned low. Ash curled into itself. The room was colder now, like the truth had taken some of the heat with it.

Marcus turned toward the dark. Toward whatever came next.

“None of us has it all right,” he said. “And maybe that’s not the point. The point is to walk anyway. Through fire. Through fear. Through silence. Keep walking. Don’t flinch.”

Plato stayed near the hearth. Eyes distant. Always reaching for something just out of reach.

Jesus stayed too. But he wasn’t looking at the fire. He was watching the cracks in the stone floor.

The road outside didn’t care who they were. It didn’t care about crowns or crosses or academies.

But it waited.

And in the end, that was enough.