Cycle

It's always about choices, I guess;
and there do seem to be historic cycles
of man's inhumanity ... rebirthing
is always accompanied
with mess and pain.

perhaps on a happier note ... prompted by earlier posts here

CYCLES


The man could not be distinguished as young or old, just sitting there on the jut of damp beach. Everything about seemed gray, as often the way of this place where the clear stream meets the fan of ocean foam, but not desolate until he came. The patch of sand there was alternately swept by stretching ridge of dying wave, then next by a surging from the narrow stream in an attempt to hold back the moon. His life seemed to have no more purpose than to melt into the gray, to be one with the timeless struggle.

“You should teach,” they all had said. “You really have a gift. People love to hear you speak and you know so much. Everyone needs the help you can give.” So he attempted to tell what he knew and instruct people about the folly of their ways and the chaos in their lives. He showed them a better way and talked of truth and discipline and the need to prepare for the harsh winter of their intellect. Most turned away and even laughed. Even those who became inspired lost interest when he could not give all of the answers. “If they didn’t want answers what did they want? If they have no desire to learn what is there for me to do?”

Even on the shadowed beach there were distinctions amongst the gray stones and the man began selecting individual pebbles for their uniqueness of shape, shade or unnamed appeal. “This represents what I know,” he murmured to himself. “If I had to select one to give away, how would I choose without knowing the reason or purpose for the choice?” And he thought long on this revelation until the tide had all but buried the stones. It was only then that the man noticed the young boy at his side but sensed somehow that he had been there a long while. The child picked up a single stone from those he had not himself been able to order and handed it over, saying, “This one, I think, would smile more in a mountain brook.”

The man’s life was changed that day and he no longer tried to teach. Instead he shared stories about leaves caught in swirling eddies and thistle-down being confused with the stars. He talked about the simple things he knew and let each man select for himself anything of value. When pressured to instruct or give advice he would say, “ask instead about the smile of a stone.” Then he would share a tale, or ask questions as in a riddle.

“When a child succeeds to the top of a granite boulder is it not futile to point out there was a surer path, or to describe how you had climbed a bigger rock in your youth? Would it not be better just to ask, ‘what do you see from up there?” and share a new view of the world.”

“When a man attempts to show affection for his wife in the giving of a rose or the remembering of a date is he not trying to ‘teach’ her how to love? Would it not be better to create an atmosphere of affection and in the words of Moses, ‘let thoughts distill like dew?’”

When questioned over the problems of teaching the youth of today and even the impossible task of instructing adults in manners of health, safety and salvation, he would rub the stone beneath his cloak. He would question back, “Does new technology that has made it possible for someone to teach themselves destroy the atmosphere of learning? If everyone is now a teacher, who is the student and what is the lesson?”

The man became a wanderer in mind and of land and always carried that stone close to his heart. He came to know that Indians revered great rocks as sleeping lonely people waiting for someone to sing to them. He learned many things but found few that were powerful enough to teach, or risk the pain. He spent time on the streets with the desolate and helpless, and found there also people waiting as great stones for a song that would teach them how to live, but who had lost the ability to learn. But his own world became rich in color and vibrant hues with flickering lights and laughing children. He felt a kinship with all men and a peace that comes from letting feelings ‘fall as gentle rain on tender grass.’

He came across many who would teach the way to God and learned much when there was an atmosphere of growth and search for truth, but felt betrayed when told that learning was not his choice to make. Did not, Merton, the greatest scholar of our time, say before his death, ‘What we have to be is what we already are?’ In his learning the growing man taught himself many things and knew that it was the search for a suitable spot to place the ocean pebble that drove him on. As the man grew older and wise he constantly asked himself, “When Christ said ‘give up all that you have and follow me’ is it possible this instruction had nothing to do with material things. Is not the failure of teaching that it must be combined with pride, arrogance and even deceit?” He learned many things about himself that could never be taught to another, but also knew there was no greater joy than to see something clearly and to share that inspiration with another. “Is that not enough?”

He came to listen to the whispers of yearning spirits and found profound thoughts in unexpected places. Profound knowledge may come from great books and anguished scholars, but wisdom comes from those who have lived! Years are less important than passion and intensity, for in fact, peace of spirit and self doth strip years away. He came to listen in the market place of mothers of many children. He came to listen to those who worked with their hands and molded Light's gifts into tools of men. He listen to the artist, the street performer, the children's minstrel show attempt, and the poor poet in the smoky tavern. He learned simple truths like, "never doubt in darkness that which you believe in sunlight." His betraying pride and hubris slipped away when he discovered that, "there is nothing noble about besting another. Nobility is wrought from being better today than you were yesterday." Long years became reduced to appreciation of seasons, weeks of commitment, days of fulfillment and moments of joy. At length his anguished search came near to end with the words of an aging priest at an outdoor mass, "unless the pilgrim carry with him the thing he seeks, he will not find it when he arrives." Peace! Surrender. Find innocence.

One day the teller of stories felt courageous enough to climb to a hidden glade and sing to the silent pinnacles. He rested there in a shady glen where most everything was green, as often the way of such a place where the reflected light from pacing stream yearned upward to dance with the bright light from above. This interplay created an illusion of motion as if a breeze were blowing that gave life to every stone and fern and wayward leaf. The array of subtle colors was astounding! And then he knew! He tossed his lifelong friend into the glistening pool and heard its laughter above the tinkling of the spring. He mused again over his life and selected a different stone from the tiny shore and listened to the song of the wind that wasn’t there, but only in his heart.

The particular spar of sand on which he had sat many years before was gone with the shifting time; but the mixing of water about his feet was magic; the salt with the fresh, the birth of life with life’s renewing. The rocks that sheltered the cove shown in a hundred shades of blue and teal and dove and black. The moldering sky teased with the light and let an occasional ray break through to pierce a green-gray edge of falling wave. In a brief azure sharing, a tiny fish could be seen trying to learn how to ride the crest. A mountain found stone fell silently from his hand.

The woman stood alone in grief and kicked at the tumbled pebbles along the beach. “Why, why she wailed? What is the meaning of it all? Can’t someone teach me how to survive?” Her despair was such a force that all reason and hope were driven from her. “Teach me. That is all I ask. Please teach me!”

A child came close, selected a colored stone and pressed it into her hand. “Would not this stone smile more in a mountain stream?”

papa faucon (2001)