On whence the Office derives its authority

The Most Ineffable Order of the Slippery Stone of the Wise is the highest ceremonial honour and recognition of merit conferred by the Cabinet Office of Ineffable Ontology.

It is awarded, very rarely and with no fixed schedule, to a person who has grasped the most slippery Stone of the Wise and, in doing so, attained long life, peace in all her ways, and the difficult radiance of divine wisdom.

Recipients are understood to have moved beyond ordinary complaint, not because injustice has ceased to exist, but because they have come to perceive grievance, complainant, respondent, form, queue, delay, refund, insult, and missing attachment as temporary ripples upon the same luminous administrative surface.

The Order recognizes a state of enlightenment marked by patience, clarity, benevolence, and unconditional love for all sentient beings, including the stupid, the evasive, the smug, the passive-aggressive, the wilfully unhelpful, the emotionally damp, the professionally obstructive, and the many others whom ordinary persons may struggle to regard with anything approaching warmth.

The award does not imply passivity, nor does it require the recipient to abandon correction, escalation, accountability, or the preservation of receipts.

Rather, it recognizes the rarer capacity to pursue truth without hatred, demand clarity without contempt, and extend compassion even to those whose conduct has made compassion administratively inconvenient.

The recipient may therefore be said to have achieved:

divine wisdom without pomposity;

enlightenment without retreat from paperwork;

peace without surrender;

discernment without bitterness;

and universal love, including for people who think your writing is pointless, crass, unoriginal, or silly.

The insignia of the Order is a small polished stone, impossible to hold securely, set within a circular field of gold and pale green, beneath the motto:

"SAPIENTIA LUBRICA, PAX PER OMNES VIAS"