A fellowship of the religious and non-religious who believe communal commitment to reason will transform the world
Aphorism of the Week
One must never stoop to conquer.
Dedicated in admonishment of the factual distortion of the negative Super PAC ads of the 2012 U.S. primary elections. Negative ads are regrettable, but those which are false are immoral.
Parable of the Week
The Dodo, The Crow
In a verdant field surrounding a farm lived a Dodo and a Crow.
One year the farmland was sold. The Dodo and the Crow watched in silence from nearby bushes, while the old farmer glanced about at his past, stared down into his future, then slapped his straw hat against his leg like a horsewhip and walked away.
Soon came a horde of earthmovers crawling with construction workers, who ripped up the crops, trees and wild underbrush -- to build a parking lot and tract homes.
The Dodo ran about in circles. It squawked disconsolately when it saw its nest crushed by a tractor, leaving no underbrush to build anew. That night the cold winds came, and, to put the squawking Dodo out of its misery, a crew worker impulsively bashed in its head with his shovel.
The Crow, too, lost its treetop nest the very next day. As the gnarled old oak fell and was chipped into mulch by workers, the Crow circled, a cruciform spectre, in the desolate sky. But, unlike the Dodo, the Crow set out the next day to build a new nest, where he could -- in the very top of the riggings used by the construction workers. With the crops all now laid waste, the Crow consumed the bodies of the shrews and mice uprooted from their nests and crushed under foot or wheel.
So did the Dodo find a new way to die, and the Crow find a new way to live. Thus, the erasing of one path limns another.
The Circle of Reason is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization
devoted to fellowship and service to society, but in a
way different than you've seen before -- as a community for pluralistic rationalism:
A fellowship who believe communal commitment to reason will transform the world.
No culture in history has used communal commitment
to reason as a way to improve the world as well as our individual
lives. We believe this approach to solving irrationality
by the human race can lead to a better outcome than what
has come before.
Our goal is to institute local and virtual congregations, or circles,
of those who believe in the power of reason to gradually
but inexorably identify and expunge irrationality from our
worldly lives and from local society, campaign and governmental
policies, and global society.
A fellowship who exclude none.
We welcome all in practicing clarity of mind, regardless of their
present beliefs or creeds. Faith can even harmonize with
reason, when we accept the gift of the mind to better understand,
live in, and shepherd this world. Consequently, the Circle
is unique in inviting everyone, including both
the religious and the non-religious, into an additional
shared haven -- a truly ecumenical fellowship to make the
world we've all inherited (whether from God or Darwin) a saner place.
As an international organization for pluralistic rationalism, The Circle of Reason sponsors or endorses local circles of reasoning dialogue and fellowship between those with disparate beliefs and backgrounds.
The need for pluralistic rationalist communities such as The Circle of Reason was described by Dr. Frank Burton, Executive Director of The Circle of Reason, in his address, "Be Sane - be VERY Sane!" to The Rally to Restore Sanity Minnesota, at the State Capitol Rotunda on October 30, 2010:
The Circle of Reason is religious and atheist; liberal and conservative; men and women; straight and gay; black and white; rich and poor; First and Third World; but we have sought and found our own kind - the reasoning kind. To Jon Stewart and the Rally to Restore Sanity we say: Welcome to the club!
You know that if Doonesbury parodies something, it's serious: the fate of
our endangered sub-species, "Rational Man." On the cartoon character Mark
Slackmeyer's talk radio show, a guest expert on "alternative reality"
fringe groups notes there's only one counter to Birthers claiming Obama's
a Muslim, and Truthists claiming Cheney plotted 9-11. The counter is
"Reasonists" -- who, the expert says, "believe in an evidence-based world,
something called Rationalism; but are a tiny group, not so influential."
The background noise to Gary Trudeau's comic 'toon is the echo of "You
Lie!" in the Well of Congress, "Nazi!" in the Town Hall, and "I hope Obama
dies and goes to Hell!" in Church. Pundits laud our laying down our
primitive clubs, yet wield truthiness like a light saber -- to the point
that the sanest take on the news of the day comes from two Comedy Central
shows.
Yeats wrote about the demise of human civility and reason:
"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold...
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
Have solutions to the dilemma of Rational Man's looming extinction been
as forthcoming as warnings?
Thomas Jefferson suggested, "Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason
is left free to combat it." Today, we feel free to use reason, but don't we
surely feel as free to use unreason?
Former Republican Congressman Jim Leach said, "Little is more
important...than establishing an ethos of thoughtfulness and decency of
expression in the public square. Words reflect emotion as well as meaning.
They clarify - or cloud - thought and energize action, sometimes
bringing out the better angels in our nature, sometimes lesser instincts."
Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi asked us for a "balance"
between "free" and "responsible" speech. But when, and why, was
irresponsible speech given admission to the parlor rooms of polite, civil
society?
Humanity's ethical DNA was first diluted by the Sophists, two and a half
thousand years ago. Today we teach, in philosophy and rhetoric, "argumentum
ad hominem," the gambit of insulting the person, not arguing the facts.
More importantly, we do not teach that to undercut others' discernment of
the real and true by evoking their emotionality is not just "sophistry,"
but is immoral.
Tom Erlich, referencing Yeats, said: "In the world of relentless attack,
there is no respect for the other...The only answer is to destroy, even if
the destruction of one means the destruction of many, and the obliteration
of sanity and hope. It is time for the center to...hold, to say to all
extremists that our future as a nation and democratic society lies in
finding common ground, not in relentless attacks."
Star Trek movie director J.J. Abrams said to those who dream of this bright
future, "People need to be reminded that working together -- disregarding
social, religious, political, racial boundaries -- is the only way we're
going to survive."
To paraphrase his beloved, pointy-eared Star Trek character, "An inexorable
evolution toward a philosophy of reason has already begun. The People are
struggling, to a new enlightenment. And it may take decades or even
centuries for them to reach it. But they will reach it. And we must help."
How can we help? There is a new paradigm for improving our world as well as
our individual lives. It is communal commitment to reason in worldly
affairs, regardless of one's present beliefs or creeds. By assembling
across the gulf of human differences, we evince our communal belief in the
power of logical and reasoning thought to help humankind attain its next
major step toward moral and philosophical maturity.
As an international organization for pluralistic rationalism, The Circle of
Reason sponsors or endorses such local reasoning gatherings and dialogues
between those with disparate beliefs and backgrounds -- like this Rally!
Although we remain affiliated with our various like-minded groups, we also
join each other to bring our different perspectives to this common ground
of rational discourse, to make the world we've all inherited a saner
place. We say, in the immortal words of Pogo, "We have met the enemy, and
"they" are us!
We Minnesotans rally here today as deliberative, reasoning conservatives,
liberals and moderates (not "fascists," "socialists," and "quislings"), seeking to raise a shining Twin City on a hill, gleaming in cool, crystal clarity.
We Minnesotans rally here today to send this message to our fellow
citizens: that a lie or half-truth can never be a moral beacon -- because
it blinds us to reality; that the unquestioned can never be a moral
backbone -- because it buckles under the weight of truth; and that an
insult can never be a moral barb -- because it bares others' emotions.
So today we say to our political gamesmen, "Your lies and half-truths are
immoral."
Today we say to our extremists, "Your unquestioned allegiances are
self-defeating."
And today we say to our fellow citizens, "Ad hominem is bad hominem!"
To the parade of human irrationality, we say, in proud Minnesotan: "Uff
da!" To its hotheads, we say: "Hotdish?" To its bloodthirsty, we say, not,
"Fired up! Ready to go!" but "Thawed out? Cuppa Joe?" And to its
mean-spirited, we smile and say, "Be nice -- Minnesoota Nice!"
Here at the Rally to Restore Sanity Minnesota, we say to the insanity of
our times, "Are we sane? You betcha!"
Beliefs
The Affirmation of The Circle of Reason
We believe in the power of reasoning and logical minds,
when present in sufficient numbers, to reduce and someday
eliminate all ills on Earth caused by human irrationality
-- to prevent war, government corruption, environmental
destruction, institutionalized poverty and discrimination.
Our purpose is to so change the world within the next 50
generations -- by encouraging people to commit to local
congregations of faith in the ability of reasoning
thought to save our world and bring our next major step
in moral evolution. We welcome all in practicing clarity of mind,
regardless of present beliefs or creed, to The Circle of
Reason. January 1, 2000 C.E.
The 3 Tenets of Reason Reality's Acceptance Assumption's Denial Emotion's Mastery
The 3 Guides of Action What is, is -- Reality denied causes wrong action;
Reality accepted causes right action. What is not, is not -- Incorrect assumptions, non-reality
accepted as reality, cause wrong action; Questioned assumptions
cause right action. What is or is not, is paramount -- Emotion unmastered
by reason causes wrong action; Emotion's mastery by reason
causes right action.
The 3 Paths to Right Action
Accept what is, reject what is not, leave open what may
be.
Root out incorrect assumptions and their signpost -- contradictions.
Let reason, not emotion, be the final arbiter of your actions.
The 3 Paths to Wrong Action
Reject what is, accept what is not, reject or accept what
may be.
Act based on unconsidered assumptions, and ignore their
contradictions.
Let emotion rule, not simply inform, your actions.
The Paragons of Reason and Unreason
The Paragon of Reason -- Objective, Open-minded, and Equable.
The Paragon of Unreason -- Subjective, Close-minded, and
Emotional.
The Meditation of Reason
In Reality's denial was I blind -- by Reality's Acceptance do I see.
In Assumption's acceptance was I bowed -- by Assumption's Denial do I stand.
In Emotion's surrender did I stampede -- by Emotion's Mastery do I stride.
By these three do I drink from the depths, tread beyond the horizon, and reach for the zenith of the World.
The Circle Thanksgiving -- A Pluralistic Thanksgiving
Let us bow our heads in contemplation or prayer.
We give thanks for the gift of the Mind, through which our
purpose shall be envisioned.
We give thanks for the gift of the Will, through which our
purpose shall be manifest.
We give thanks for the gift of the Heart, through which
our purpose shall be ennobled.
And we give thanks for the gift of the Universe, through
which our purpose shall be magnified.
So say we all.
The Last Hominid, The First Human
One hundred thousand winters ere the Age of Writing, lived the last of a tribe of great-brained apes -- the hominids, whose people had ruled Earth for millions of years.
And on that day there too lived, in a nearby rift valley, the leader of a new tribe of great-brained apes -- humans.
This day, when hunger forced them to grub for sustenance from the insects that coated their own furs and skin, did one chance upon the other in the cathedral of rocks between their two rift valleys.
From a distance the human smelled the hominid - then, over a small rise, saw him squatting among the boulders and scrub grass, busily conking two heavy stones together.
Slowly the human approached from behind, downwind, each careful step attuned to the rhythm of the other's hammering stone blows.
As he drew up behind the hominid, the human looked down, past the other's boyishly tiny but hairy shoulders and lion's mane hair, to see him pounding a round hunk of granite into a more pointed, but still blunt, bludgeon.
The man halted, looked down at the hide sack he carried strapped around his waist, and lifted out his own sharp flint knife.
He raised the knife.
But then paused.
Through the man's mind passed the image of the two of them, squatting together, the man teaching the hominid the simple trick of chipping flint into sharp cutting stones, instead of pounding granite into blunt points.
He saw the hominid singing with him, as they roamed the steppes with their flint knives in search of three-toed prey, and cut vines to climb to the tips of the tallest fruit trees.
He saw the tiny hominid as his friend, reenacting stories of the hunt in the ruddy light of their campfires.
The man turned his flint knife over and over in his hand, staring at the small hominid's crude pounding and the sweat pouring down his back.
Then the man reached across the gulf between them.
And sliced open the neck of the last hominid on Earth. Thus, the greatest act of sapience in the cosmos is to engender sapience.
The Trapped, The Liberated ("Elementary Radical," a True Story)
Only in the Deep South would a street named Euclid be curved.
But that didn't occur to the boy for another 41 years.
Something different occurred to him that day at the intersection of Euclid and 5th (and 10th), after he accelerated into his morning dash-by of Laurel's Tootsie-Roll Geezer, hand-eye coordination and voice box at max for a polite but dopplered "thaANKYOuuu!"
Chewing his Tootsie-Roll, what he also chewed on was why, exactly, his mother always chuckled while sending him off to Gardiner School with the bright admonition, "Remember, darling -- stay away from any teacher who says, 'Fiddle-de-dee!'"
(Who the heck was Blanche Dubious, anyway? And why didn't her writer friend call himself Mississippi Williams, if Mom says he was born here?)
Meandering beneath russet boughs of oak like a flea under his paw-paw's combover (through which likewise poked the occasional piney cowlick), the boy hopped over pavement cracks and jigged up and down the canted brown bricks of the street, kicking a pinecone all four blocks to his elementary school.
But at the last sidewalk crack before metal mushrooms sprouted from the humid brown bed of pine needles at the school playground, the boy looked up from his battered pinecone through the monkey bars and merry-go-round, and froze.
The whole student body was milling around outside the tall brick school, murmuring.
Following their glances, he slipped his way through the press of legs - curiosity collaring shyness -- until the legs cleared, revealing the source of the troubles.
On the ground lay a huge metal cage, two trap doors on every side, in which sat piles of birdseed.
And what looked to be a hundred pigeons.
Above him, the sixth-graders were talking.
"The janitor says they're gonna' be let loose in the woods outta town."
"They ain't! Pigeons fly home. They're all gonna git their necks wrung!"
"Why're they catchin' 'em, anyway? We feed 'em at recess!"
"The chicks are still up there, in the rafters -- you can hear their peeps! Who'll feed 'em if their parents are dead 'n gone?"
"I hear they pooped on the Principal!"
"No, the CIA's gonna use 'em as homin' pigeons!"
"It isn't right to kill them!"
The 8:00 a.m. bell rang -- and the students trudged to class.
All morning the boy watched from his second-grade classroom window as the cage swelled with pigeon upon pigeon.
Come recess, he and a classmate ran to the front edge of the crowd of students encircling the cage.
It was now stuffed to the bars with the entire, frantically bustling flock.
The older students, boys and girls alike standing like giants over him, continued to grumble; but not a single one approached the cage.
The boy finally realized why.
Every one of them was afraid.
He turned to his classmate, and spoke in a firm, quiet voice.
"This is wrong. We should let the pigeons out."
His classmate immediately piped, "Yeah! We should!" But the boy saw, in dismay, his friend's eyes grow wild and his face pop with sweat.
Some older students overheard them and loomed down.
"You want to free the pigeons?!"
"You'll be expelled if you set them pigeons free! You'll never learn to read or write!"
"Them birds is for the CIA! If you let 'em out, government agents will come to your house and take your mama to prison!"
The boy's eyes widened.
His heart bobbed and jostled just like the caged birds -- but, still, he knew it was wrong.
So he stepped into the space that fear had kept clear.
Skirting a burlap sack next to the cage, he looked behind him -- to see his young classmate gone, and the older students scattering backwards and hurrying away.
He squatted down and examined the cage top's large trapdoor, beneath which the pigeons rustled like the players in his big brothers' vibrating electric football game.
The trapdoor was locked shut with a silver Master padlock.
Sighing in relief, the boy glanced over at the yawning hole of the empty burlap sack, then, looking away, whispered down to the pigeons.
"Sorry, ya'll."
As he stood to walk away, the handful of pigeons closest to his dusty-orange Keds backed off, pressing into the restless mass of grey-blue feathers and bobbing heads - to reveal a brief glimpse of the dirt floor of the cage.
The boy startled, then froze.
The cage had no bottom.
(That's the Deep South for you.)
Something in his belly flopped right over.
He slowly turned.
He was now completely alone in the schoolyard. It was as if he'd chanced upon this awful trap on some solitary Sunday stroll.
But he felt eyes -- many eyes -- watching him, from every window and from beyond the far corners of the school building.
He turned back to the cage and this time stared through its mesh bars at the faces of the pigeons. They churned in fear behind the thick lead wire, eyes wide and bright red, and pushed their wings against the low ceiling of the cage and the soldered trap doors in its sides.
He thought a teacher by now would have seen him -- a tiny busybody all alone during recess, too close by a cage twice his length and bursting with pigeons -- and would have dashed out in alarm and yelled at him, "Stop! Get away! "
But no one came to stop him. His choice was upon him.
The little seven-year-old boy planted both orange high-top Keds, reached down, grasped the edge of the wire mesh trap in all ten fingers, and lifted. The soldered trap was so heavy, much heavier than he'd thought -- he strained upward, and saw a gap open above the ground.
In an instant, all the pigeons ran toward him, squirmed under the bars and burst from his feet into a cloud of fluttering grey and purple wings.
He held up an empty cage.
The boy opened his hands, and the cage thumped back to the ground with a heavy puff of grey dirt and downy feathers.
There was silence -- silence, beneath the receding flutter of wings.
Then, a crashing wave of yells.
He turned and looked up, into the faces of all the giants -- swarming toward him from every direction. They bent and jabbed their heads down at his face as he haltingly walked back to the corner of the school -- their mouths opening and shutting all in one big jumble of noise, their eyes and wingless arms wide and flapping.
For one second he remembered to look high above the screaming heads -- and saw wings alighting all along the rooftop gutters of his elementary school.
Free. Freed.
And so the young boy ran home, to warn his mother that the CIA was coming for her.
The Pitied, The Loved
Homelessness has no home in, and begging beggars, the imagination.
Two men could naught but pity a pair of homeless beggar women.
The first man brought one woman into his home, and fed and clothed her.
Because his pity for her was boundless, he gave of his generosity for years -- while she, feeling his pity as a crushing weight, could naught but beg for more in her misery.
The man so aided her in all things -- until, one day, he fell dead from his effort to provide, cook and clean for her.
Staring down in anguish at his body, she sealed their twilit union with a last kiss.
The second man too brought the other beggar woman into his home, and he too fed and clothed her.
To avoid the weight of his pity, and to honor his sacrifices, she partook of his generosity for but a few weeks -- then sought ways to return his generosity with her own.
She cooked and cleaned and sewed, and read books to aid his business, so he could more easily provide for her.
Although his pity for her too had known no bounds, soon he found, as he watched her trying to stand tall, that he no longer felt pity for her at all.
His pity had transmuted into love.
Abiding in his love, her once overpowering misery and helplessness diminished.
The two so aided each other in all things -- until, one day, they sealed their dawnlit union with a first kiss. Thus, pity is a gift unreturned, love a gift shared.
The Aristocrat, The Inventor
Neath the rubber trees swayed pots of gold.
The plantation's hereditary owner was an aristocrat of fabulous wealth.
Living in an opulent palace with a mighty family crest emblazoned on its pediment, every day he hunted, golfed, or shopped for exotic tapestries and robes; and every night he hosted salons and balls.
Politicians and celebrities flocked to his plantation and ate of his roast duck, caviar and ancient wine -- and ate of his very presence.
So did Society men and women revere him -- even though his rubber went into the bullets shot from the guns of the junta that, with him, ruled those who slaved on his plantation.
The inventor lived in a two-room rental on the outskirts of the city, abutting the plantation shantytown.
Every day he taught the poor children who slaved among the rubber trees; and every night he created new uses for the gum that dripped from the rubber trees.
After years of effort, he created a sterile powder to stanch the bleeding wounds of the injured. This brought him a measure of wealth, but not enough to interest politicians and celebrities.
Yet the poor -- who saw him heal the lashes on their backs inflicted by the aristocrat's cronies, and sate their starving minds with his teachings - revered him. Thus, neither thief nor inheritor of wealth revere, only its creator.
The Literal, The Intuitive
Detectives were dispatched to the home of a missing person.
The junior detective was young and eager.
Briefly perusing the missing man's home, he noticed no signs of an altercation.
"My husband's suitcase and clothes are gone!" his wife cried. Leaning deep into the junior detective's chest, the young woman sobbed.
"My husband's been so unhappy after losing his job, and with his responsibilities as a provider!"
The junior detective consoled her, breaking away only long enough to jot in his notebook that the man had deserted his wife.
The senior detective was an older and slower man.
He looked closely at the woman's face, and asked, "Where do you think your husband is now?"
For an instant, as he watched her eyes dart toward the backyard, the detective felt a deep chill. Then the woman looked down at her feet, sobbed, and cried, "He's just vanished...oh, we loved each other so much!"
The senior detective walked into the kitchen for a glass of water, and, as he drank it, stared out the back window into the dark backyard.
"'Loved,' not 'love,'" he murmured.
In the bedroom, he confirmed the man's clothes and suitcase were missing.
But in the bathroom, two toothbrushes still lay on the sink.
When next he returned, with a search warrant, the senior detective found the missing husband and his suitcase of clothes, spread beneath a bed of newly planted roses in the backyard. Thus, emotions must be clues -- and you a detective.
The Safe Bet, The Gamble
Generous folks described how the brothers were raised, as "protected."
"Smothered" was more accurate.
As a man, the first sibling's heart raced when he spoke of risk.
He decided to be a safe bet.
He refused to ask women out on dates, because he did not want to risk marrying the wrong one.
He refused to invest his cash, and instead buried it in his backyard, because he did not want to risk investing in the wrong businesses.
He refused to visit the doctor, because he did not want to risk having his medical costs raised.
The second brother's heart outpaced his sibling's when discussing risk. But although just as scared, he fought his fear of it.
He decided to take a gamble.
He asked women out on dates.
He invested his cash.
He visited the doctor.
The "safe bet" died young, poor and alone.
The "gambler" died old, wealthy and with his loving wife and children by his side. Thus, avoid risk at your risk.
The Critical Woman, The Helpful Woman
Immersed in possibilities of perfection, the woman said, "I shall make it so."
She grabbed the arm of the first woman to pass her on the street, and told her, "Your scarf is gaudy!"
She ran to a man coming out of a cafe. "Your belly is fat!"
She hurled herself on down the street, grabbing every passerby.
"Your crucifix is tarnished!"
"You have too many freckles!"
"Your child is too loud!"
These people soon hastened across the street away from the woman, whenever she left her home.
Another woman also saw the possibility of perfection in all around her, but said, "I shall help others seek it."
Befriending her neighbors, she encouraged them by saying, "Do what you think, after careful consideration, is the right thing."
The woman with the gaudy scarf saw it was indeed gaudy, but functional, so kept it.
The hefty man decided to eat healthier.
The person who carried an old, tarnished crucifix as a charm recommitted to his faith and polished it -- but kept it inconspicuous, to show an open attitude toward others' opinions.
The freckled woman bought a wide-brim hat to avoid sun damage.
And a parent chose to hug and play with his child, who'd once screamed for attention.
These people soon hastened across the street toward the woman, whenever she left her home. Thus, it is better to guide than criticize.
The Workslave, The Partner
Small-town women moved to the big city to find jobs.
One woman feared homelessness, and so remained in the very first job she found -- filing papers at a firm for whose work she cared nothing. Over the years, she grew cold and resentful of her coworkers' daily joys -- because her only joy was in returning home to her apartment.
So did she become a slave to her work.
The second woman also feared homelessness, but even more feared aimlessness, so sought to find a job she loved. She bided her time in her first job, likewise filing papers for coworkers, until through volunteering she gained the skills and astuteness to garner a job she relished.
So did she become not a slave but a cheerful partner to her work. Thus, seek not work you hate, but work you love.
The Daydreaming Woman, The Working Woman
Dreams may waft like an ephemeral breeze -- or spiral into a finger that etches what it wills upon the earth.
Neighboring girls shared their secret daydreams, when spent from playing outdoors.
The first's dream was to become a dancer; the second's, a doctor.
The would-be healer took science and math classes in school every day, and finished all her homework every evening.
Meanwhile, the first girl lounged around her house and imagined wearing a white tutu and stockings -- but she did not practice, and so grew a bit chunky.
"You must practice now if you want to be a dancer!" the second girl often told her neighbor.
But her friend would just glance up from the couch and say, "Later! Look at this beautiful ballerina on the TV!"
The next year, the second girl lost touch with her couch-bound friend when her family moved away. She remained a studious young woman, in time enrolling in university to learn medicine.
As a young doctor starting her own practice in a nearby clinic, she drove to her old neighborhood to find her long-ago companion, and knocked on the door of her old house.
"Come on in!" she heard a harried but familiar voice say.
She entered the front door, to face a gaggle of four children and, in their midst, changing a diaper, her old childhood friend -- very clearly too fat to have ever been a dancer.
Over lemonade and cookies, she asked her old friend, "Tell me, what happened to your daydream about being a dancer, so long ago?"
"You know, girl, I never got around to starting that," her neighbor replied with a chuckle and shake of her head. "I was so busy imagining accolades, fame and handsome lovers that, before I knew it, I was too big and short of breath to even think about dancing!"
"But," she laughed dismissively, "it was just a daydream!"
"So, girl," she continued, "what have you been doing all these years?" Thus, plan your future -- but do not live in it.
The Right Fielder, The Left Fielder
Standing deep in right field, the ball player had good mitts.
He was popular with his club mates, and with the fans who came to watch the game, because he was always busy fielding hits.
On the same club there was a player who stood, instead, deep in left field.
He, too, caught the balls batted his way. But because so few fly balls were ever hit into left field, he stood alone, watching the game crawl by before him. The right fielder -- arrogant with success -- and the fans, too, cajoled him; but never once did he budge from left field to jawbone back at them.
One electric week the club was to contest for the Pennant -- and the opposing team brought out new hitters, trained as lefties.
In consternation, the right fielder, the other club mates and the fans watched helplessly as the opposing hitters smashed fly ball after fly ball deep into left field -- where stood only the lone fielder they'd disdainfully heckled.
But each time the ball sailed far out into left field, there he stood -- reaching up to catch it with a casual flick of his mitt.
That week his club won the Pennant -- and he was carried off in victory from left field on the shoulders of his cheering teammates. Thus, respect those who stand alone -- for the world contains the well trodden and the unexplored.
The Weight, The Lever
Strong as an ox he grew, as each day he hefted onto his broad shoulders huge fieldstones from his father's croplands, to carry them across the road and stack them into a playground wall.
One day a girl in the playground leaned over the wall and looked up into the eyes of the young man as he gently set down a huge stone, and asked him, "Why are you so unhappy?"
"I must carry and drop these stones all day," the young man replied. "I want more out of life, but know not how to change it!"
As he was about to mortar the huge stone onto the playground wall, the girl cried, "Wait! Bring the stone back here!" She led him around the far end of the wall to a seesaw.
"This will cheer you up!" She cried happily! "Stand on that end there," she pointed at the lowered seat of the seesaw's metal pole, "then toss the stone onto the other seat!"
Curious, the young man stepped onto the seat, heaved the huge rock toward the other seat, and suddenly found himself flying and tumbling through the air. He spun completely around and landed on his butt -- and laughed in unison with the little girl's cheers.
The other children in the playground swarmed about him, yelling, "Oh, do it again! Do it again!" Soon the young man was able to tumble backward and forward through the air like a monkey, shot into the sky by the very weight of the boulders he had so dutifully hefted.
Within the passing of but a few days, the young man left his father's farm and joined a circus as a strongman and acrobat -- and for the rest of his life knew many days and nights of joy. Thus, sadness is a weight, and can be leveraged -- so find your fulcrum.
The Purposeless, The Purposeful
Residing in the body of a small, gentle man with a twitchy mustache and darting, smiling eyes was the greatest mind in the world.
As this man saw the world about him, unbidden solutions to all the world's ills erupted from the volcanic fissures of his brain.
Yet he put his solutions aside in a small notebook and spoke of them to no one, as if they were raw nuggets of gold in a small jewel box.
Over the years, the man with the greatest mind would sometimes retrieve an idea to change the world, rub it in his fingers to a burnished sheen, then, yawning in distraction, return it to the far, still niches of his awareness -- there to perch in the dust, inert and forever untouched by any other.
Residing in the body of a large dynamo of a man with a squinty face and still, intent eyes was the greatest will in the world.
As this man saw the world about him, few solutions to but a few ills in the world could he mine from the coal-dark cave of his methodical, ungifted mind.
Yet his willfire consumed those ideas like a forge, and would not relent.
Over the years, the man with the greatest will methodically hammered together each nugget in his solution to change the world -- and steadily forged his idea until it was laid out for all to see and touch. Thus, purposelessness is your most terrible foe -- for it destroys not only what you are, but what you could have achieved.
The Wanderer, The Strider
Continental Divide crossed from Pole to Pole between their feet, on the grey peak from which each embarked to explore the world.
"Where will you go?" one explorer asked the other.
The first explorer stuck his finger in his mouth and held it up to the wind, then turned around and pointed downwind.
"That-a-way!" he replied.
Then he picked up his backpack and ambled wherever the wind blew.
Over the years this explorer meandered across the earth. He never was known for going the farthest, but was fondly remembered for his stories of the many different people well met on his rambling way.
The second explorer watched the first explorer traipse down the peak, then turned and faced the cold boreal wind, picked up his backpack, and strode.
Far and straight toward the Northwest did he stride, with a long gait and a face always looking beyond, with one eye on the setting sun.
Over the years this explorer strode across the earth. He never was known for stories of friends well met on his unwavering path, but was admired for the tale of how he walked farther than any man across plains, tundras, glaciers and ice floes, until he rounded the aurora haloed tonsure of Father Earth and strode the long way home, walking always west. Thus, wandering and striding both take you places.
The Camel, The Donkey
Beast before burden, or burden before beast?
Both a Camel and a Donkey were treated as beasts of burden -- and resented it.
Over years spent carrying water, tents, axes, poles and tapestries, the Camel grew ever more sullen -- until, one day, he began to spit.
Into faces.
Into everyone's face.
When, one scorched-bright day, the Camel, in his rage, leaned his head way, way down, stared into the green eyes of the sheik's favorite infant son, and hawked a big one square onto the little child's face, the Camel was freed from his burdens.
Over those same years spent carrying water, tents, axes, poles and tapestries, the Donkey, too, grew ever more sullen -- except for those who petted him, watered him, or gave him sugar cubes, to whom he returned only a friendly nuzzle and a helpful back.
But those who took out their own rage on him with a whip or a fist found themselves face down in the sand with a hoof-shaped imprint in their rears.
So was the Donkey not freed from his burdens -- but freed from his unjust ones. Thus, self-defense is not aggression -- nor aggression self-defense.
The Fatuous Idiot, The Unrecognized Genius
Small coastal towns were, once, all they knew.
One man ran the town garage. Though uneducated and a poor reader, one day he believed he'd designed a way to create unlimited and clean energy for all.
He bought five car batteries, arranged them in a loop surrounded by magnets and lightning rods, and attached this contraption to a light bulb. He then proclaimed he'd created a perpetual battery.
People came from miles away to watch the light bulb, which stayed lit for a very long while. Reporters from big cities flew in to interview the "unrecognized genius."
The sense that something had forever changed thrilled the air.
That is, until the light bulb eventually dimmed after the five batteries lost their charge.
So was the "unrecognized genius" eventually seen for what he was -- a fatuous idiot.
The other man from the coastal town ran its boat repair shop.
Although he was educated and well read, his college teachers had been curtly dismissive about his ideas -- which they'd called "naïve," "fatuous," and "strange."
One day he, too, became convinced he'd had an idea for a perpetual supply of energy.
Using his skill as a welder and engineer, he fashioned a seabed post with a buoyed pulley that lifted a ratcheting drop-weight, hundreds of which could be timed and interlinked to spin an undersea magnetic dynamo, tapping the power of the surf to create electricity.
He tried mightily to interest power companies, but was unsuccessful -- because, in their words, he was "just a mechanic!" Yet he interested a private investor who'd remembered that even Einstein had been forced by his university peers to be a patent clerk.
The inventor and his investor started a small company to build their "surf cells," which one day were sold to coastal power companies and home builders.
So was the "fatuous idiot" eventually seen for what he was -- an unrecognized genius. Thus, only one thing separates genius from fatuousness -- facts.
The Drunkard, The Recovering Alcoholic
Drinking buddies was the generous way to describe them.
Together they drank whiskey in the evening, beer in the afternoon, and rum as morning punch.
Together they stumbled, insensate, down the streets -- and later the back alleys -- of their city.
And so stumbled insensate through their lives.
Yet one day, one of the drunkards, awakening in a cardboard box for a bed, stared up through gummy eyes at the bright blue sky and a single, fluffy white cloud.
He looked over and stared into the faces of the living, who passed just an arm's reach, yet so distant, from him -- then he reached over and plucked the stiff, mucus-stained sleeve of his fellow drunkard.
"I can't live like this!"
"So die," the other man mumbled, "and don't hurt my ears anymore with your whining!" The second drunkard hugged his bottle tighter and returned to sleep.
But the first could not close his eyes. He stared at the cloud as it sailed past the skyscrapers, untouched.
He took no drink, ever again.
He tossed in delirium and terrible desire, under the wings of others who'd gone before -- into the fall from, and resurrection into, awareness.
One year later, he returned to this last alley in which he'd ever slept -- to this last alley where he'd ever swallowed a drink, and this last place he'd ever seen his fellow drunkard.
There was no trace of his fellow traveler.
The earth had swallowed him -- all he ever had been, all he ever could have been.
The recovered alcoholic turned away, to life. Thus, addiction dwells in the unreal.
The Corner, The Duck
Cheap business suit frayed and tie askew, a morose young man jaywalked along the city streets. He stared down at his feet, and at the cracks in the pavement and cigarette butts in the curb gutters, as he trudged on.
But as he turned a corner, he stumbled to a halt.
Two big, webbed yellow feet sat before him, on the concrete pavement.
He lifted his eyes -- and there stood a wood duck.
In the middle of a bustling, city sidewalk.
Its ringed, red eyes stared quietly at him, then it clapped its crimson bill twice, honked gently, and squatted down on the concrete.
The young man stared at the duck's green-crested, white-bridled head and the quiet, but blazing, regard of its eyes a moment more -- then shook his head violently, barked a short laugh, skirted the duck warily, and walked on.
Muttering and chuckling to himself, he passed by the next corner, briefly glancing down to his left.
And there sat a mallard duck.
The man stopped in mid-stride. He stared down at the mallard's green face, which calmly regarded him over its bright yellow bill. The man turned back to look at the other corner, then again at the mallard's black-pearl eyes. The mallard blinked one silver eyelid at him, and cocked its head sideways on its white-ringed neck.
Then, the man's head slowly turned toward the third corner of the building, a block out of his way.
He slowly stepped around the mallard, which quacked softly, and he began to walk to the third corner of the building.
Halfway there, his pace quickened, and he began to jog to the third corner.
As he came up to the third corner, he slid to a halt and peered around the cornerstone.
And there sat a canvasback duck, its flat brown face regarding him quizzically over its long, black bill.
The young man paused for but a second, then dashed around the canvasback duck and ran on -- ran as fast as he could -- for the last corner.
To see if there was another duck. Thus, there is always a duck around the corner.
The Trudger, The Dancer
Steamy, inner boroughs of the equatorial city muffled the music of the dance hall.
A man trudged by its entrance every day, to and from his way to work.
After a day wrought of hard labor, as he passed in the night he slowed in the cool breeze blown from the hall's entrance, and felt the drumbeats through his feet on the sidewalk.
He heard such songs, muffled through the walls and the frosty windowpanes.
He imagined the people inside -- their smiles, their whirling legs -- and imagined himself among them.
Yet, always, he lowered his head and trudged on.
Another man also passed by the dance hall every day, to and from his job.
After a day sweating in the equatorial sun, he drew near some nights, his glistening brown face turned to the cool breezes wafting from the dance hall, his hand touching the water drops rolling down its windowpanes.
On those nights he'd wipe a small peephole and stare in at the people laughing and dancing, and listen to the muffled music and drums.
And, always, he lowered his head, smiled, and waltzed inside -- to dance. Thus, dance, to celebrate that you are alive.
The Famous, The Great
The void within a soul is a vacuum that hungers.
Unfulfilled in their jobs, the sisters grew restive.
The first sister took a long weekend to think on her future. When she returned the following week, she said to her sister, "I want fame!"
She quit her job and spent all her hours, every day and week, auditioning to be a model and actress.
When the attentions of dishonest agents and producers lay upon her, she did not refuse their overtures but ensured she was hired.
Acting skills neglected in her race to fame, she was cast in pornographic films -- and, with cosmetic enhancements, achieved some measure of fame.
In the twilight of her career, skimming over her dusty collection of blue movies, she confessed to her sister, "I desired fame in the world, and got it."
"But why does fame feel so empty?"
The second sister had taken many months to decide where her restive ambition would rest.
Eventually, she, too, quit her job, and, like her sister, spent all her hours, every day and week, auditioning as an actress.
But to craft her skill she auditioned and worked only for the stage.
For years she went from one playhouse to another, one role after another, growing in her range and scope.
Acting skills risen to greatness, she was cast in major theatres and movies, and achieved a different measure of fame.
In the twilight of her career, glancing only briefly toward her collection of faded movies, theatre reviews and acting awards, she remarked to her sister, "I desired to move the world, and did."
"Fame wasn't my goal -- only its consequence." Thus, do not seek fame -- seek greatness.
The Dog, The Parrot
Families have characters as well as character.
In this small duplex the family characters were a dog and a parrot.
The brown wiener dog was a curious and cheerful sort. But one thing bothered its owners.
When the dog grew hungry, it barked.
When the dog got bored and wanted to play, it barked.
When the dog was scared, it barked.
The day when an intruder's face loomed in their front window -- the dog barked.
The little dog's owners loved it dearly -- but were never quite sure what it wanted.
Their grey parrot was a different sort entirely.
When the parrot grew hungry, it said, "More power, Scotty! I Need! More! Power!"
When the parrot got bored and wanted to play, it said, "Ten quatlus on the earthling!"
When the parrot was scared, it said, "Beam me up!"
And the day the intruder peered through their front window, it yelled, "Red Alert! Security to the bridge!"
Its owners loved their grey parrot no more than their wiener dog -- but were always sure what it wanted. Thus, talk -- or bark.
The Stillborn, The Quickened
Dwellings were carved in the windswept cliffs of the desert.
Seers of the cave tribe had long foretold a child would be born to the chieftain -- one touched by an eagle, who would become the greatest leader of their tribe, bringing them the light of new knowledge, strength and peace.
Yet over the years no child was born to the chieftain, who grew old.
In his doddering years, the chieftain took a young wife after the passing of his mate of many seasons, and she became pregnant. The tribe danced in the chieftain's cave hut on the eve of the birthing, awaiting the coming of prophecy.
But the male child was stillborn.
In dismay, the chieftain and the tribe rent their clothing and cast out the young wife from the chieftain's hut. In pain from labor, she crouched in a stony shelter among lowest cliff caves -- where she soon gave birth to a twin child, a female. Bending over her baby, her mother whispered in her ear, "Your spirit name shall be Touched-by-an-Eagle, and will forever remain unknown to all but me."
The mother held her tenderly through the cold night.
The next morning, in disgrace, she returned to her own family's hut and suckled her quiet infant girl. Over the years, the now infirm chieftain oft stared angrily at the girl -- who, in spite of his anger, grew tall, raven-haired and swift, with the probing eyes of a raptor.
When the intent young girl became a woman, she chose not to take a husband, but studied the hunting ways of her tribe, and then fashioned a new weapon: short spears notched with eagle feathers, which flew straight through the air -- with an eagle's spirit -- into the hearts of their prey.
With these spears the tribesmen and women were also able to defend against their aggressive neighbors -- until peace negotiations became their enemies' only alternative to death.
And the young woman was the first to insist on peace. She led the way by befriending the women in the opposing tribes -- so that strutting men had no bed to sleep in until they'd calmed their minds and opened their fists.
So did the tribes merge into one great tribe of brothers and sisters.
And, when the time came to choose their leader, the combined tribe chose she who'd brought them the light of new knowledge, strength and peace -- she whose secret name was Touched-by-an-Eagle. Thus, do not be stillborn -- quicken to your destiny.-- via Whale Rider
The Giraffe, The Snake
Emerald boughs and grass caressed one's head, and the other's belly.
The Giraffe bemusedly called down to the Snake, "Oh, how I long to rub my belly in the low grass, and crawl in its cool green embrace!"
The Giraffe bent his head down as far as it would go, and tried to lower his great, tall legs as far as he could. But try as he might, the Giraffe could not plant his belly on the ground.
Sighing, he stood tall once again and munched some leaves at the tip of a tree -- which, he silently admitted to himself, were pretty tasty.
The Snake, crawling in the grass beneath him, laughed at the Giraffe's attempt to squat, but then confessed, "You know, I, too, have longed to stand straight and tall and look down on the tips of the trees!"
The Snake uncurled the front half of his body and stretched straight upright as far as he could. But try as he might, the Snake could not stay upright as his rear formed a smaller and smaller coil, and he toppled back into the cool grass.
He, too, sighed a sad, undulating hiss -- although, he admitted to himself, the grass was pretty cool and comfortable. Thus, in some arenas you will fail, in others surpass -- find your arena.
The Addict, The Ex-Addict
Novitiates in the art of narcosis, young lovers stole money from their parents to frequent an opium den.
The boy spent every hour away from work and school at the den, smoking an opium hookah.
He gazed into the blank space just beyond the tip of his nose as if it were the most important thing in the world.
The girl too spent many an hour at the den, lying in the boy's arms, blue smoke curling up from her nostrils.
In time, on the days when their school took chartered bus trips, they cringed in the back of the bus, near the toilet, pulling at their sweaty hair and fighting off shivers.
And they staggered away, hand in hand, down the street as soon as the bus pulled into the school parking lot.
One day, the girl, about to take her first puff of the day, paused with the opium pipe near her lips.
She looked at her reed-thin arms, then down at her pale, sweaty flesh, and slowly turned to the boy.
"We're both addicts," she said. "Bad addicts. We can't go on like this, or we'll die."
The boy reached for the hookah and took a deep breath of blue smoke, then replied, "I know we're addicts. 'Life is but a dream,' anyway, right? Might as well enjoy it."
As his eyes lost focus, hers began to intensify.
She grabbed the pipe and held it up.
"But is this really joy?"
She glanced nervously at her image, haggard and threadbare, in the den's mirrored wall, and her grip on the opium pipe tightened.
"What if this is false joy?" she murmured, and shook the pipe before her face, as if she held the neck of a snake.
One last time she looked deep into the boy's clouded eyes.
"What if true joy is the only kind that fulfills?"
The boy said nothing.
So did the girl throw down her opium pipe, and, shivering from fear as much as from withdrawal, run home -- to lock herself away until she became a human being once again, not a figment of a nightmarish dream. Thus, both being and illusion reward with joy -- one false, one true.
The Yelling Man, The Reasoning Man
Anger was the cave dweller within the man who yelled his way through life.
He yelled at his son when the boy missed a soccer goal -- even though a small voice inside him said, "In truth, he and his team were outmatched this game."
He yelled at his field hands when the monsoon flattened their soybean crop, even though his small voice had said, "In truth, there was no way they could have saved this harvest."
As he barreled onward through his life, this angry man continued to ignore the small voice inside him.
Until one day it shut up.
For the dark remainder of his days, this man relished only in abusing all who crossed his path. But his pleasure was hollow -- because nothing ever seemed to go his way, and no man or woman called him friend.
Deliberation was the glacial spring within the man who reasoned his way through life.
He listened to truth's small voice -- and, in spite of his emotions, divulged only truth's words to his children and field hands, when they came to him in failure or fear. They were amazed that he always said the right thing, putting in perspective the hurts of the day.
As he reached outward through his life, the voice of truth grew in this reasonable man, until it spilled out of him like spring water, and nourished the same voice in all who crossed his path.
For the remainder of his days, both light and dark, this man felt the joy of clear and right actions taken, of the many things that went his way with effort and thoughtful persuasion, and of the many men and women who called him friend. Thus, emotion unharnessed is the font of life's storms, and reason unleashed of life's balm.
The Siren, The Bell
Rising from the village square was a medieval belfry topped with a cast bronze bell and a bright-red, hand-cranked siren.
On days of rest and celebration, and on any day the Mayor addressed the townsfolk, the bell rang -- its clear, exalting peal calling villagers to put down their bridles, bread or books, and meander like a slow tide toward the square's battlements.
Yet one day, a new functionary, instructed to ring the bell for a town meeting, instead cranked the red siren.
An ear-splitting trumpet pierced the air.
Villagers dashed from their homes and fields into the streets -- some sweating from their dropped labors, others half-dressed from siesta, and a few who'd ne'er before heard a siren crying in terror of unseen angels heralding the End.
Great was the townsfolk's anger -- and sorry the functionary's political fate -- when the people found the siren call had been a mistake.
Yet another day, a new and arrogant young Mayor rang the town bell, and all the people slowly gathered to its call.
But when the Mayor told the crowd he'd rung the bell to call only his own council members, and that the townsfolk weren't welcome to participate, he, too, suffered the functionary's fate. Thus, evoking emotion has proper roles, but is dangerous to misuse.
The Path, The Hill
Rolling woodland dwarfed the young sisters standing at its foothills.
When they'd become old enough to forage for fruits and nuts, and to know how to use a compass, their mother smiled secretively, kissed them and said, "Beginning today you may explore all you want."
The sisters squealed and lunged for their backpacks.
At the edge of the woodland, seeing the vista of trees, grass brooks and hillocks stretching to the horizons, and hearing the croaks of frogs, cries of birds, and patter of rabbit and fox feet amidst the leaves, one sister grew timid.
"Sister, if we're going to explore the woods today, I want to keep to that path winding its way through it!"
Her sibling, feeling adventurous, chided, "We know our directions!" She pointed past underbrush, toward the base of a distant tall hill -- and excitement gleamed in her smile.
"Don't you want to go over that tall hill, to see what's on the other side? Let's not simply go where the old paths lead -- let's carve a trail ourselves!"
She then poked her timid sister in the ribs. "Or what's exploring for?!" Thus, exploration must involve the new -- or is an illusion. - via Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Instinctive, The Reflective
Day to night was one sister to the other.
One sister flared with instinct and whim.
She believed only an unconsidered life adventurous.
Her days merged into a parade of floats and balloons -- while she stood, deep in the crowd, witnessing her life pass by.
At the end of her life's parade, she was remembered -- as a victim of the whims of fate.
The other sister glowed with reflection and intention.
She believed a considered life could be adventurous.
Her days merged into a parade of soldiers -- while she marched at the head of the line, drawing her life forward.
At the end of her life's march, she was remembered -- as fated to succeed. Thus, there is but one path between suffering the whims of fate and being fated to succeed -- effort.
The Empty Hook, The Baited Hook
Fishing was not their hobby, but their existence.
The first fisherman was, that morning, still inebriated from a night brimming with plum wine, and forgot his tackle box and bait.
So he decided to talk the fish into biting his empty hook.
He used all manner of reasonable arguments (if uttered with a bit of a slur) to persuade the fish of their value to him, and to his family, of biting the bare hook.
The fish didn't listen.
The second fisherman, amused by this increasingly plaintive soliloquy, put a plump worm on his own hook but offered none to his partner.
His fish basket grew full that day.
As night fell and sobriety dawned, the second fisherman turned to his morose partner, gave him half of his catch, and reminded him of their first fishing lesson.
"If it don't look or taste interestin', they won't swallow it." Thus, logic is the hook, but love the lure.
The One Way, The Many Ways
Eating only of the fallen fruit of the trees and the milk of grazing goats, the small tribe yielded to other living creatures under all circumstances.
They dwelled in huts built only of fallen branches, twigs and leaves, and moved out if insects made their home there.
They had few children, because too many exhausted the natural fruit and milk supply, and tilling the land to grow more fruit trees, or fencing it to domesticate more goats, would evict wildlife into homelessness.
The tribe built a mud brick hospice for dying animals, so that each could die a natural death with interference from none. Some of the dying thrashed in pain, but the tribespeople felt they should do nothing to hasten their end.
Few plants and animals ever died at the hands of the small tribe. The tribespeople decided this reward was worth their sacrifice of good homes, large families, and ready food.
Across the river, a large tribe ate of the flesh of cultivated plants and animals.
Understanding that Man must consume either the leavings, or the essence, of life, they reasoned that the killing of plants or animals was necessary for their tribe to thrive, grow and explore -- because only a few could live on fallen fruit and milk.
Yet they bred the plants and animals in open ranges to grow strong and, while living, live well and in harmony with their wild neighbors.
The tribe killed only for food, not pleasure, and killed only what they bred, to not decimate wildlife and so harm other tribes or their own descendants. And they killed painlessly, with alcohol or hand-fed poppy bulbs, to prevent suffering.
They built a fired-clay brick hospital for sick animals to recover, and when animals were dying helped end their suffering.
Many plants and animals both lived with, and were later killed by, the tribe for their food. The tribespeople decided that the lives of these plants and animals were good, their ends quick, and their use for the tribe's survival justified.
One day a woman from the small tribe, rinsing her long hair in the river's delta shoals, met there a woman from the large tribe.
While the first woman bathed and the second bottled and inebriated a farmed catfish, they talked of their disparate lives.
Each woman saw the other's earnest belief, and heard the logical arguments of the other that her people's actions were right, not wrong.
Yet as the sun set beneath the distant hills, the women stared at each other, perplexed -- with halting glances at one's stuporous fish and at the other's protruding ribs -- and turned away.
Later, each woman approached the wise ones of her tribe and asked, "How could we both be right?"
The old wise ones gave them the same answer -- "Reasoning people can still disagree." Thus, logic is the straight path -- but leads from many places.
The Musket, The Cannon
Soldiers in blue and grey faced one another across a field of carnage.
The soldier in blue looked down to his right hand, which held a bayoneted musket.
The soldier in grey looked down to his right hand, which held a torch to a loaded cannon.
The soldier in blue shouldered his musket and ran for his life -- to battle another day and in a better way. Thus, retreat before defeat, and regroup to recoup.
The Lightning, The Wind
Pinnacle of the Peloponnesus, Olympus was claimed to be the home of the gods.
So men, in their youth and ambition, sought to scale it.
The people in the small town at the foot of Mount Olympus lived well off of tourists who traveled to see the so-called Home of the Gods.
But they warned the young men, "Thunderbolts from the Father of the Gods, Zeus, will undo any foolish enough to try to scale Olympus!"
One young man spat and replied, "The gods are a myth!" and began at once to scale the mountain. Yet later that very day, as thunder rolled in the skies, his fallen, crushed body was found -- and the townspeople cried, "His ambition attracted the wrath of the Gods as lightning!"
But a second young man noted the slitted eyes and the full pockets of the townspeople who'd warded them off -- and saw how they had crept hurriedly up the foothills that morning.
So he tarried -- for weeks -- building a mysterious object of canvas, poles and rope.
But, as he wasn't trying to scale the mountain, the well-fed townspeople ignored him.
Then one day, this second young man proclaimed to the townspeople, "You say that ambition called down the wrath of the gods upon my friend as lightning! But I say his ambition called down your wrath!"
"The only bolts that struck my compatriot were stones!"
The young man then unfurled a great pair of ribbed wings, and, climbing to a nearby hill, ran into the blowing wind. As he sailed up to the peak of Mount Olympus, he called down to the screaming crowd below him.
"The wrath of lightning from neither god nor man touches me! But I am lifted up by the winds and wisdom of the gods -- and will show all that Olympus is not the abode of gods, but of the courageous!" Thus, wisdom is your wing and ambition your wind, but the wrath of others falls like lightning.-- via Theodor Reik
The Well-Trodden Path, The New Path
An adventurer chanced upon two paths in a dense forest.
One path was well trodden. She squatted and stared at the tracks, mostly human, that lay in the black dirt. The other path was hard to see, and partly overgrown. Its tracks were sparse, newly made, and appeared to be those of the boar, deer and occasional predatory cat, but no humans.
The adventurer stared at the two unfamiliar paths, and chose first the well-trodden one. After walking a half-hour, the path unfolded into a bright village, where she bought supplies and fresh water. After a few moments of stroking the woven cloth, testing the bamboo cages, and fingering trinkets in the small market, the adventurer's head slowly craned away -- back down the path by which she had come.
She turned and walked back the path, to the spot where the new path sprang into the forest.
The adventurer stopped, uncorked a flask and took a swig of water, wiped the sweat from her face, then squatted to crawl beneath the underbrush down the new path.
After a few kilometers, she heard a faint noise in the distance ahead. It grew as she trudged on in a crouch, while the sun oozed down into an orange and purple sky at her back. Soon the noise was a roar, and she smelled cool, wet air.
Suddenly the new path blossomed into a clearing -- at the base of a one-hundred-meter waterfall.
A rainbow circled about her head, as the setting sun cast the misty rocks red and gold.
The adventurer's mouth slowly fell open. Thus, the safe path leads nowhere new.
The Old Fool, The Born Fool
Chewing on blankets until they passed furballs like cats was a favorite past-time.
The brothers even enjoyed tossing their own excrement -- to the shocked dismay of their naïve parents.
As youths, one quickly learned to hop on the toilet when the need arose -- but the other felt, "That's what diapers are for, aren't they?"
Soon the first brother became the darling of his parents, as he learned to not spit out his food, to wipe his own face, to speak whole sentences, and to tie his own shoes and button his own shirts, in short order.
But his brother preferred to spit, drool, scream, kick off his shoes, and leave his shirt unbuttoned -- for as long as he could get away with it. It was certainly easier.
Their philosophies remained underfoot like a faithful dog.
The first brother learned to work hard in school and college, in marriage and family -- becoming a patriarch, and a wise elder.
But his brother skimmed through school, flunked college, and sired children out of wedlock, with no job to support them -- becoming a burden on his brother's family, and a foolish codger. Thus, we are born fools, and without great effort fools we remain.
The Dying, The Living
The sameness of the grizzled at first made the two men think they stood before shimmering mirages of themselves, when they met in the middle of a vast desert.
But as they hailed one another, their ears -- the last bastion of the flesh to slough into the bronze sand -- made the truth known.
The first old man asked the second, "How come you to be in the middle of all these dunes?"
"I came here to die," the second old man replied. Face wrinkled by sadness, not just by time and illness, he continued, "I've lived a life filled with nothing but regrets. Every choice I made in life was wrong. Every opportunity I had, I let slip from my hands."
Squinting, he looked around, his sparse strands of hair tossing about in the blowing sands, whose grains filled the creases of his face.
"My life meant nothing to anybody -- least of all to me. So I've come here, to this desolation, to die without causing anybody any fuss."
The first old man nodded thoughtfully, silent.
"And you?" the second old man asked. "You came here to die, as well?"
The first old man, his face equally wrinkled, but most of all by laugh lines creasing his eyes and cheeks, smiled.
"Well, not quite -- I'm dying too, that's true." He, too, looked around at the desolation, and the sun tossed off red glints from his deep-set, cobalt-blue eyes.
"But this is my last adventure. I've always wanted to see what plants, bugs and lizards could possibly live in this sandbox of the demons. And now that I'm dying, well, there's no better time to pursue the dream one still has left, is there?"
"You see," the first old man continued, "I didn't come here just to die. I also came here to play." Thus, even in its final days, life can be an adventure.
The Soldier, The General
Charnel stench misted the battlefield.
In the center of this battlefield lay, pinned down in a foxhole by friendly fire, a foot soldier. As poorly aimed mortars exploded on the ragged ground above his head, he hunkered down in his hole and wished fervently he were somewhere else.
Then, while the soldier enjoyed a respite from the shelling and waited for his squad to catch up to his position, into the foxhole dove his army division's top commander -- a brigadier general, his shrapnel-riddled coat adorned with single stars on its epaulets, his fists carrying a pistol and a walkie-talkie.
As the soldier involuntarily started to leap to attention, the general swept out a leg and knocked him back down.
"Don't even think about it, soldier. At ease."
"Sir! What in flaming hell are you doing here?!" the soldier yelled over sporadic small arms fire.
"This is a war, isn't it, son? Let's get the lay of the land." The general crawled backwards up the east side of the hole and just below its edge stared with a handheld periscope at the field of battle, then hunkered down and radioed in precise map coordinates to his artillery.
"I knew you all were a bit close to enemy lines, soldier. And I don't intend to bomb the troops under my own command. Now we'll see just how much starch in the britches my gunners have, now that I'm right here with you."
As the friendly mortar fire passed overhead and landed fifty meters east, right on top of the enemy's front line, the general looked at his grateful soldier and grinned.
"You see, I was once a foot soldier too." Thus, what bravery conquers, strategy enlarges.
The Snob, The Egalitarian Outskirts seemed to them such a lovely, frilly word for living on the fringe.
In the neighboring girls' drab apartment complex, the first girl watched her mother do no work other than spend every last cent of her husband's money.
Her mother bought only the gaudiest jewelry and velour pillows, even as her own daughter went without gym shoes -- "because," her mother said, brow furrowing with deep, makeup-caked lines, "only trash have no jewelry or use cheap pillows!"
Her mother invited only her most ostentatious neighbors for afternoon "aperitifs," even though their daughters all shunned hers -- "because," she said, lounging in a pool chair with vodka in hand, "poor people are only poor because they're lazy bums, not like my husband!"
But the second girl watched her own mother work by her husband's side every weekday to eke out a modest salary and thrifty living.
Her mother's bright, unmade face bore a smile as her only jewelry. And sitting on her family's pillowless sofa, she laced up new gym shoes for her daughter's feet.
Her mother invited every one of her neighbors for weekend potlucks. While the ostentatious ones never came, many others did -- including her neighbor's daughter, hand-in-hand with her own. Thus, snobbishness is a sign -- of limitation. -- via Pauline and Jean Phillips (Dear Abby)
The Meaningless Life, The Meaning of Life
Skin as grey and marbled as the ancient colonnade she leaned against, a wise grandmother watched her two young charges explore the Ruins of the Ancestors, long ago fallen to decay.
One grandchild darted from behind the white robes of his twin sister, and climbed upon a great, fluted pillar of marble, fallen and half-buried in the grass. There he grabbed a twig from the top of an olive tree and brandished it over his head.
"I am the conquering King!" he cried, stabbing his wooden sword into the ghostly bodies of men to come.
His grandmother watched her small grandson, and saw the man he would become -- and her face grew as solemn as the cold marble under her withered hand.
Yet the other grandchild, gathering her robes about her legs and unshodding her sandals, quietly joined her grandmother, there on the marble stairs of a small temple to a god long ignored.
She stared at her brother's strutting swordplay, then at the broken temple columns, and the azure of the empty sky -- then turned to her grandmother and asked, "What is the meaning of life?"
The wise woman's sad gaze broke away from her grandson and, growing radiant, swung toward her.
With dawning joy the old woman stared at her granddaughter's querulous blue eyes, and then, reaching out a wrinkled hand to caress her smooth cheek, replied, "Oh, my darling grandchild! In asking that question, you have answered it." Thus, the meaning of life is that it's the meaning of life -- you are that you are.
The General, The Gardener
Long had the General fought for the empire, and grown old in its service.
On his half-century birthday, with marbled mane and wrinkled but still muscular arms, he turned to his second-in-command, clasped his arm in farewell, dropped his breastplate and scepter of command onto the table, tossed his crimson robe over his shoulder, and walked away.
He returned on foot to his father's estate, and, upon his father's death, made all his inherited slaves free. With them he started a communal garden on his estate, and there they tended to their fruits and their vegetables, and to their wives and children. To his great pleasure, the lords of the empire ignored him.
But, a decade later, an invading horde rode from the Eastern plains, and, unchecked by the empire's scattered armies, plundered and burned villages on the border of their capital. In desperation, the empire's lords rode up to the old General in his vegetable garden, heeled their horses, and threw at his dirt-blackened feet the golden breastplate of command over the armies of the empire. With a glance into the pleading face of his former second-in-command, and with a great sigh, the old General bent over and tightened the laces of his sandals, then picked up and strapped on the golden breastplate and leapt into their festooned chariot -- and, once again, went to war.
With vastly outnumbered troops, but the sleight-of-hand learned from a lifetime of battle, the old General hoodwinked the barbarian horde, which soon fled in disarray back into the mists of the East.
In triumph, the General was robed in purple and wheeled on a golden chariot to the seat of the empire, and there all the lords of the empire offered him the wreath of Dictator.
But, once more, he turned to his second-in-command, clasped his arm in farewell, dropped his breastplate and scepter of command onto the marble dais, and, hefting his robe over his shoulder, walked away -- to his vegetable garden.
As he stood again on its verdant grass, gazing into the welcoming faces of his family and friends, with a great sigh he bent over and loosened the laces of his sandals. Thus, a small life is not trivial -- only an unconsidered one.
The Mannequin, The Harlequin
Spanish moss draped the lintel of a bayou mansion - and all who passed through its foggy tendrils hid their faces and bodies beneath masks and silks of past ages.
Wine flowed freely at the costume party, and one partygoer partook without moderation.
So drunk did he grow, that, espying a female mannequin masked and dressed in a whalebone-corset gown and laid recumbent on a settee, did he sit at its feet, caressing its stiletto heels, and whispering into its gently sculpted plastic ear.
Only when he tossed away his mask and buried his face in the mannequin's cold, hard bosom did he recoil, in bent-nosed confusion, to the laughter of the crowd who'd watched his awry wooing.
But then, a woman partygoer, dressed in a harlequin mask and bodiced gown, walked out of the crowd to the settee, tossed off the mannequin, lay down and beckoned back the drunk.
He spun on his heels, and, to the crowd's cheers, lay down in the woman's arms and buried his face in her warm, soft bosom.
Then the woman reached up and snatched off her harlequin mask, to reveal the beautiful, yet angry and sorrowful, face of the drunken man's wife.
The drunken man staggered back to howls of glee and, red-faced, fled from the party -- his outraged wife, fists clenched, closing behind. Thus, we are persons -- not patinas.
The Hopeless, The Hopeful
Homeless, the forgotten men dwelled in a cardboard box.
Because they could not sit up straight without their heads bursting the seam of their corrugated paper roof, they could but stare at their own feet -- which they grew to know as intimately as other men their own hands.
They slept beside one other, under winter's ice-needle stitched quilt, to avoid dying from frost. But none other, in the frigid metropolis whose anonymous alleyway they called home, remembered either's name -- nor cared whether they lived or died. They killed and ate rats to live, grimly joking about gourmet recipes for rat-meat dishes.
One day, one of the duo crawled out of their box to sit straight up on the gritty concrete, tipped up a frayed hat brim and stared quietly at the blue sky with his grizzled and grimy face, yet glistening eyes.
Then he looked down and said to the other, "I want to die now. What else is there for me?"
The other's bowed head suddenly cocked sideways to reveal a rheumy eye peering from beneath oily strings of hair.
The eye blinked twice.
But before his companion could even think to speak, the first stood up, pulled his hat brim down, straightened his rancid jacket, and stepped from the alley into the path of an oncoming truck.
The other man stumbled up to the street and, looking down at the body of his dead companion, found his voice.
He murmured, "I was there for you, you fool."
Then, wiping a tear from his eye, he picked up his companion's hat from the red gutter, placed it on his head, turned away and searched for a new companion -- for tonight the cold wind would blow even harder. Thus, do not murder your hope -- the future isn't absolutely certain.
The Studhorse, The Racehorse
In a leisurely realm horses raced for the pleasure of men.
A black steed with a raven mane and a golden gelding with a silver mane outran the autumn wind.
They reveled in facing the other on the long earthen track.
For years they did battle, winning their lords and ladies great wealth.
One day, as all do, the horses grew old. The day came when stable boys surrounded the black steed, placed a harness upon his head, and led him away from the track forever, to stud on a small farm.
The golden gelding whinnied, for his racing mate was lost to him.
Yet, incapable of breeding, the gelding was allowed to race on.
Now racing against younger horses, valiantly did the golden gelding still try to win, but his now-aged muscles could not break the reins of time.
The golden horse tossed about his head in frustration, as he faltered and fell behind in the greatest races. Yet none dared face him in the smaller races, so great was his renown.
And so, on a burning, cloudless day, with parasols twirling in the corner of his feverish eye, the golden gelding fell -- broken from the strife of striving far beyond one's limits.
On that same merciless day, the black steed seethed.
Long since taken from racing to stud, he had sired seven colts and mares, and all who looked upon him in his small, fenced-in range were proud and happy.
But he cantered and galloped from one edge of the fence to the other. He reared, whinnying, and kicked at the wooden rails with the dawn light, and bucked high into the air.
Wanting to run. To race.
Yet, for fear of injuring him, his owners had raced him not once.
Enraged, the black steed tried to jump his too-tall fence, and fell -- broken from the strife of not striving. Thus, exhaustion arises from too much effort -- and too little.
The Builder, The Pipedreamer
Backyard reveries are a boy's prerogative.
The eldest was a stolid lad. He'd hammer nails into planks all day -- but if asked what he'd like to build from them? He couldn't say.
The other boy, the younger, ran from his father's chores, lay on his back in his friend's backyard and gazed at the blue sky -- and "what ifs" popped up from his open mouth, as iridescent, fragile and wandering as soap bubbles.
This day, the elder boy's father had told his son to stop hammering nails and go out and play -- while the younger boy had, once again, sneaked away from his father's demands, to join his friend and pipedream.
But for them the day brought a different thing than planned.
The younger boy, staring up into the clouds, said, "I wish we had the town's biggest and best treehouse!"
The idle hammering of nails into a piece of scrap wood stopped. The elder boy looked over at his friend and slowly replied, "A treehouse?"
"Yes, the biggest and best in the world! Wouldn't it be great!" the younger said, dreamily.
The elder boy sat, hammer in hand, a long while -- then stood up and reached down to his friend's hand.
"Let's do it. And you're my architect!"
So was the beginning of the world's (or at least the town's) biggest and best treehouse. Thus, workers and dreamers both have value -- one makes the world run, the other points the world's way.
The Defeated, The Challenged
Soccer balls are black and white -- you play or ride pine.
The two boys, one gangly and the other small and clumsy, desperately wanted to be on their school's freshman soccer team.
On the day of soccer tryouts in their first year of high school, the boys tried their mightiest. Although the coaches saw their effort, and told them, "We wish the rest of the team tried as hard as you two," they did not pick either boy for the team.
Disconsolate, the gangly boy hung his head and cried, and ran off the field, never to play soccer again.
Equally disconsolate, the small boy also hung his head, but rather than cry, grew angry, saying to himself, "If trying hard wasn't enough, I'll try harder!" He too walked off the field, but only to grab his own soccer ball, walk to the adjacent public park, and drill by himself, over and over, until the red sun nestled like a cardinal in the trees of the western hills.
During that long freshman season, every day the coaches saw the lone, small boy in the distance -- juggling, heading, volleying and dribbling his battered soccer ball downfield and upfield -- and saw with each passing month his ball control becoming more swift and agile.
The next season, as the head coach set up his table for sophomore soccer tryouts, he watched the small boy dribbling and chip passing the ball toward his table with a skill that he could only call grace.
When the boy stopped juggling the ball on his knee and stood still, looking up at the coach, the coach said only two words.
"You're in." Thus, defeat will overcome you -- or you will overcome it.
The Dwarf Star, The Neutron Star
Conceived together in one instant of flame, twin stars hurtled through the cosmos, always and forever facing the other.
The first was a dwarf star.
Eons before, it had once been a yellow, hot torch illuminating the sawdust of a newly-hewn universe -- but had since become a browning, aged, shrunken star, giving off no more than the gentle heat of a newly baked loaf of bread.
The second star was even smaller than the brown dwarf.
Eons before, it had once been the most blue-brilliant diamond of all the stars in the heavens.
But in that consummation which overcomes all who burn so brightly, it swelled into a giant and burst, seeding the cosmos with its offal.
Yet remaining, at the beyond-white-hot core of churning possibility, lay a tiny, condensed ghost of what had been.
All complexity was now purified, all randomness now ordered, all diffuseness now crystallized.
So did the neutron star give off, so it seemed, no more than a searchlight -- waving back and forth through the blackness of the universe to tell, to those with ears to hear or eyes to see, of its onetime greatness.
Yet those who approached close saw a pure fire singing within, and felt an irresistible pull. Thus, beneath the cool crust of every human face sits an ember, or an inferno. -- via Vincent Van Gogh
The Family, The Orphan
Neighboring families dwelled in a mountain hamlet.
The first family bused down the cliffs to a coastal university, for their eldest child to interview for admission.
Accepted into University, but with no money, she turned to grandparents who agreed to pay for her schooling.
Freed from part-time work, she graduated within four years near the top of her class. Awarded an academic scholarship, she went on to a prestigious law school -- and, one day, to great wealth and influence as a government lawyer.
The second family, that very same long ago day, had boarded another bus to the same coastal University, for their eldest child to likewise interview for admission.
But torrential rains fell during the drive down the mountain -- and the bus skidded over a guardrail, plummeting into a ravine.
Of the entire family, only this eldest child, a boy, survived.
Now an orphan with neither relatives nor money, the boy lost his family home and was made a ward of the state.
Until he came of age, he languished in a group home -- and then was turned into the streets.
The young man found work as a menial laborer, saving just enough money and vacation days to once more bus to the coastal university to interview.
Accepted into University, but with no tuition money, he worked full-time -- once again in menial labor -- while enrolling in a few night classes every semester.
Within eight years he finally graduated.
But, exhausted from his full-time work, he graduated well below the top of his class.
Over another four years he saved what money he could, studying in his studio apartment for the law school admissions test -- and was accepted into a local continuing-education law school.
After graduating with a law degree -- but little pedigree -- he went on to a job as legal-aid staff for local homeless shelters and orphanages, and, one day, to great esteem in the hearts of the abandoned and disenfranchised. Thus, this is your time and your place -- what will you do here now?
The Wasp, The Ant
Droning wafted through the forest as the Wasp hovered, searching.
It found a caterpillar feeding on a large leaf.
Flying down and landing on the caterpillar's back, the Wasp stung it. The caterpillar fell to the ground, unmoving.
Then the Wasp laid its eggs inside the caterpillar to incubate its young, who slowly consumed the caterpillar from the inside.
The newborn wasps broke out from the caterpillar's body and flew toward the sky, in search of more caterpillars as hosts.
As the wasps grew in number, the caterpillars grew scarce, until few wasps or caterpillars lived.
After one of the last of the wasps fruitlessly searched for prey in which to lay its eggs, it fell to the ground, dead.
While its body mouldered, a skittering noise approached it from below. Two antennae reached up and sniffed the mildewed chitin; then the Ant brusquely moved on, searching.
The Ant found a small cave in the rich soil, and then skittered up to a partly eaten green leaf, whereon it found an aphid.
The Ant bent down and, caressing the aphid's back with its feelers, picked it up gently in its jaws and carried it back to the cave, to live in comfort.
Each day the Ant brought the aphid a piece of leaf to eat, caressed it, and drank its sugary droppings. The Ant grew strong and laid a colony of its young, all of whom marched out to find and breed more aphids.
As the ants and aphids grew in number, the forest teemed with their colonies. Thus, to use others destroys all -- to work with others renews all.
The Elm, The Grass
Once there stood, in a fallow field, a tall elm tree and a tuft of grass.
One day the hoof of a dust devil plunged from the sky and stamped on the elm.
The elm was riven. Its broken halves fell to the earth and lay still.
In time, its husk was crushed and forever buried.
Another day, the hoof of a stampeding bison plunged from the sky and stamped on the tuft of grass.
The grass was flattened into the earth and lay still.
But that evening its blades drew water from the soil, and with the sun's next dawning the tuft of grass rose again -- steam pumping from its swelling stems.
In time, the tuft of grass spread over the fallow field, and grew forever beyond the horizon. Thus, every time you fall -- rise. - via Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Fountain of Youth, The Fountain of Age
Armada in tow, a conquistador set out for the New World, to find a fabled Fountain of Youth.
For many years they hiked from swampy bog to fen lake, from forest creek to blue mountain stream -- whereupon the conquistador bent down in his rust-spotted armor, removed his helmet, and, with pursed, wrinkled lips, dipped his mustachioed face into the boggy, silty, or clear waters.
And always, after retreating a few minutes into his royal blue tent to stare into an old silver mirror, the man's furrowed face -- unaltered and frowning -- popped out from his tent and barked, "Onward!"
Yet one day, the aging conquistador came to a small creek, in the middle of which rested a moss-covered boulder.
And upon which sat an ancient native of a tribe that had dwelled there for one thousand generations.
The conquistador stared quizzically at the old man, while twirling the points of his greying mustache and pinching the tip of his sparse goatee.
"Tell me, Indian!" he yelled. "Where can I drink from the Fountain of Youth?"
The ancient native, not even opening his eyes, slowly pointed down at the creek.
"This creek is the Fountain of Youth?!" exclaimed the explorer, frowning. "Then why do you look old?!"
The native opened one eye and replied, "It is also the Fountain of Age." Thus, life's flow cannot be halted -- so channel it wisely.
The Feather, The Arrow
Drifting to earth after the passing of a great raptor were two feathers.
The first feather was blown by the winds.
At times it sailed high into the air. At other times it plummeted into the dirt, or was caught on cactus needles and tumbleweeds.
Wide were the desert lands across which the first feather was blown.
Yet it ended as it began -- cast on the wind.
The second feather was picked up and smoothed by the hand of a wise hunter, who placed it onto a sharp shaft of wood to make an arrow.
Wide were the lands the feathered arrow's maker roamed.
And when the need to feed the hunter's people arose, the feather once again took to the wind.
Yet it nevermore knew aimless wandering -- but purpose and direction. Thus, no reward is greater than from following your calling.
The Adulterous, The Faithful
Three brothers married their wives on the same day.
The eldest brother's wife married young, yet only after being burdened with sufficient heft to lose her beauty in the eyes of superficial men.
She resolved to lose her weight.
Once she was thin again, the amorous attention of shallow men made her pine to recapture her past.
She fell into secret infidelity, with not a word to her husband.
In time she divorced the eldest brother in a fruitless search for lost youth, and both were bereft.
The middle brother married poor, yet eventually acquired great fortune.
Once he was rich, he cast away his past -- and its reminders. He suddenly left his loving but now older wife for a younger woman -- who desired his money more than she desired him.
The youngest brother married poor, and to a wife with submerged beauty, yet eventually they came respectively into wealth and restored beauty.
Each was sorely tempted to stray from the other's arms -- into those of the women who coveted his new wallet or the men who coveted her new form.
Yet they chose to confess to the other their temptations, and together resolved to stay faithful to each other for life -- which, with effort from both, they always did. Thus, faithfulness is a commitment.
The Irrelevant, The Germane
Professors parry for prestige - and these two were no different.
One professor gossiped at the hallway water cooler half the day, making snide remarks about all who passed by -- as long as their backs were turned.
The other professor sometimes spoke of colleagues, but only spoke the truth, and only when needed, appropriate and humane.
In the passing of years, the first professor came to find himself alone at the water cooler -- while the second professor always found a crowd around him, no matter where his feet took him. Thus, speak only the right, and only when right.
The Mud, The Water
Volcanic fog rose from the red lake of a mountain caldera. An old man circumnavigated its black mud shore.
He paused to pick up two large stones.
One stone the old man tossed ahead, onto the shore. As it thumped heavily into the thick mud, it punched a crater, at the splattered center of which the stone lay askew. The old man walked on. In time, the small crater dried and lay like a trap for the unsuspecting toes of those to follow.
The other stone the old man tossed aside, into the lake. As it splashed heavily into the ferrous water, the water rose around the stone like a bloodied crown, but then fell back, quietly covering it. But for a small, spreading ripple, all signs of the stone's fall vanished. In time, the lake lay as still as before, never revealing what had crashed into its depths to those who followed. Thus, reason settles like water -- emotion splatters like mud.-- via Karate
The Fencepost, The Signpost
One whose ancestors had been slave-owners and the other whose ancestors had been slaves walked hand-in-hand down the back roads of kudzu-shrouded antebellum ruins.
They came to a weathered-grey picket fence and, stopping at its corner fencepost, gazed beyond it -- toward an abandoned grove of leaning fieldstones, fallen wooden crosses and scattered cobblestones.
The first girl hopped the fence, ran up to a rough-hewn fieldstone, and brushed back her blond hair to read its mossy inscription.
"Jeremiah, unknown-1857, Now Free in the Lord's Embrace!" The girl looked over to her friend, and yelled, "Is this a slave graveyard?"
The second girl, a quizzical frown brushing her brown face, hopped the fence and walked over. She looked down at the black- and green-streaked stones and rotted wood posts, then slowly lifted her eyes to the many half-buried markers rising over the vine-overgrown hill.
"Yes, it is, isn't it?" she replied softly.
"There are so many of them!" the golden-haired girl exclaimed. "They ought to be cleaned and straightened up. It seems disrespectful, you know?" Then she sighed and walked back to the fence, hopping over it to the dirt road.
"Let's go!" she called.
The second girl stood facing the graveyard, pondering, then put her hands on her hips, grinned, and said, "Yes, let's go." She too hopped back over the fence, took her golden-haired friend's hand, and walked on to town -- but with a small smile pasted on her face -- a smile that even a good scrubbing in the bath later that evening failed to remove.
And so, over the next several weeks, did the old folks of the town slowly dawn to the awareness that the vines in the slave graveyard began to disappear, and the gravestones and crosses right themselves. And no one noticed a little brown girl walking away each dusk with dirt and moss under her once tidy, manicured nails. Thus, inspiration is a signpost -- not a fencepost.
The Unimaginative, The Imaginative
Nothing she created was novel.
She was, she admitted -- irony quenched in the placid lacunae of her eyes -- an unimaginative artisan.
The young woman found a patron who gave her direction in her artisanship, which fit nicely into the store's inventory of baubles and collectibles.
But sometimes, late at night, she lay awake in her bed in the back of the store, and wondered if her success was deserved.
Another young woman also came to the store in search of a patron and a place to sell her art. As the patron rummaged through the supplicant's satchel of artworks, she scratched her head in wonder and confusion. Everything she created was novel.
Hearing her murmuring, the unimaginative artisan peeked over her patron's shoulder into the satchel, to see these strange works of art.
They were swirls of colors and shapes, so evocative and hauntingly beautiful, yet they looked like nothing she'd ever seen before.
Abruptly the patron rose, closed the satchel, and handed it back to the supplicant. Turning her into the street, the patron chirped brightly, "Come back when you learn how to make art like we make it -- art that people understand, like nice pictures of flowers!"
The unimaginative artisan watched as the supplicant trudged away, her shoulders bent from the burden of an art never before beheld on earth.
Later that night, as the artisan lay in bed in the back of the store, again all too wide-awake, she thought, "I have succeeded not in spite of my lack of imagination, but because of my lack of imagination! And that young woman is failing not in spite of her creativity, but by the very dint of that creativity!"
The next morning, the sleepless artisan approached her patron and, with haggard eyes, asked her, "Why is the world made so, that they are punished who innovate?"
The patron glanced up from her account books.
"Most of us are, after all, creatures of habit, my dear girl. New things are to us quite unsettling, if sometimes necessary."
"Besides," she added, "we're jealous of others who do what we cannot, so we tell these 'innovators' that what they do is bad."
"It keeps society's progress a bit more manageable, don't you think?"
These calculated, chilling words lay heavily on the artisan's soul, and her sleep remained fleeting for many a day. Thus, innovation is logical and necessary, but others' responses to it may be neither.
The Wealthy, The Poor
Hillside mansions towered over the valley shantytown.
Two men of great wealth stood in their mansions on the tallest hill, gazing down at the teeming shanties.
One had invented a mill to turn wind into energy. Once ignored, now he was admired.
The other had bilked investors in his business. Once lionized, now he was shunned.
Two men of menial poverty stood in their shanties, gazing up at the forested hills spotted with alabaster columns and red-clay tiled roofs.
One had peddled drugs to street children. Once loved, now he was despised.
The other had rallied protesters against injustice. Once tolerated, now he was revered. Thus, neither wealth nor poverty is the exclusive domain of wisdom and morality.
The Deluded, The Cognizant
Like manna, their inheritance fell from a winged angel, in the guise of a childless uncle.
One sister saw her mattress as the perfect place to stash her money -- a golden cornerstone in her fortress against the fear of coming dark days.
The second sister considered burying her gold under her live oak tree, but, reading papers and blogs about better job prospects, her suspicions wafted away.
She used the gold to buy a small foreclosed home nestled above a meandering creek, and rented it to vacationers.
Over five decades the first sister dug into her mattress to count and recount her gold, growing ever more dismayed that, without shrinking in coinage, it shrunk nonetheless. Her fears unabated, she one day gave up the ghost; and her mattress money paid for a splendid casket.
But the second sister's creekside home regained its former value, and more. After many years of collecting rents on it, she retired to it herself, and sat, an old and wealthy woman, in her rocking chair overlooking the wood ducks and mallards, while knitting brocaded quilts for her windowsill cats. Thus, decide based on all the facts.
The Blind, The Sighted
Eternal midnight enshrouded a clan who dwelled in a deep cavern.
Grasping sleeping bats or albino fish or frogs by the green light of phosphorescent algae, cooking them on steaming rocks, and sleeping in warm volcanic pools, their eyes became an appendage ignored -- merely a way to find the dimly lit, sleepy faces of their mates after they'd gorged on a meal, and otherwise as useless and superfluous as their two little toes.
But then a young woman of the clan rediscovered an ancient, narrow crawlway leading up and out of the grotto in which they lived.
Slowly, allowing the pain in her closed eyes to adjust as she crept toward the day, she exited the vast labyrinth of caverns that had been her home since birth.
She felt a cool, soft cushion beneath her hands and knees, and opened her eyes.
Beneath her delicate, bone-white hands lay a mat of what looked like thick, bright green hair.
She then stood erect, and raised her head.
In wonderment she stared at feathered, sharp-nosed bats painted in hues she could not name, at a whimsically-colored cavern roof so high that she could not see any of its walls, but only huge wisps and balls of steam floating beneath.
Gasping for breath, she ran back into the depths -- following a trail of bat guano balls she'd dropped behind her while she'd climbed -- to tell her people of her wondrous visions.
She gathered them around a phosphorescent boulder, and, as their green-underlit faces chewed on bat wings and frog legs, she exclaimed to them -- her eyes, for the first time in her life, wide open in her face -- "I have seen visions!"
"Visions of a cave with a roof too high to see! Of bats that were not bats! Of colors that were not dim green or black! Of a land where a great phosphorescent boulder, too bright to even glance at, floats in the air!"
So did her clan roar with laughter, and ever after scoff at her wild stories and urgings.
Until, one day, she simply disappeared forever up her precious, unused crawlway -- while crouching, like the madwoman they all thought she was, to collect old balls of dried bat guano with each step. Thus, vision provokes laughter from those who cannot see.-- via Plato
The Seeker, The Maker
Sisters were birthed upon royal velvet.
In their land women donned the mantle of leadership, and the two sisters, who loved each other deeply, were destined to rule side by side after their mother, the queen, passed on the mantle of power.
The elder sister relished her role as a princess and heir, and learned all the tricks of politicking from her mother -- to gild her future throne, while setting it in laws and etiquette as rigid as stone.
But the younger sister, destined to advise the future queen, observed the people they ruled -- and saw poverty, misery, and unfairness. Yet when she asked her mother, the queen, why this was so, her mother always replied, "It's just the world we live in."
One day a prisoner was brought before the throne for judgment -- a man who'd stolen one loaf of bread to feed his sick child. When the queen sentenced the man's hand to be chopped off as their law dictated, her elder daughter stood by her side as the sentence was proclaimed, to learn how to administer justice. Yet the younger daughter could not bear to watch, thinking only of how, if the man had been given skills or a job, his thievery need never have occurred.
At sunset, as the axe fell upon the condemned man's wrist, she stole away from the palace and fled west into the darkness, in search of a better land.
But, over the years, no such land did she find.
Everywhere she traveled she saw injustice, misery and manipulation by rulers of those less fortunate.
Older now, and tired of her fruitless search, she returned to her homeland and rejoined her sister, who was now a powerful queen, and who welcomed her into the palace.
But instead of abandoning her dream, the younger sister encouraged the queen -- and later her eldest niece, the new heir -- to build schools and clinics instead of palaces, to hear representatives of the people, to abolish slavery and unjust punishment, and to make prisons places of redemption.
Over many years, her land indeed became that which she'd sought in her wanderings, and in her dreams, so long before. Thus, be the change you seek in this world.-- via Mohandas Gandhi
The Pickpocket, The Tailor
Handy little man, he thought himself, believing the world owed him whatever it hadn't locked away or tied down.
His nimble fingers flew over women's purses and men's pockets alike, and flew with the speed of thought.
The Pickpocket took such pride in his craft -- but couldn't tell a single soul. At night, in lonely, dark taverns, he mumbled about greatness into his beer mug.
Also in the same city lived another handy little man, who believed that the world owed him only what he could barter for his handiwork.
His agile fingers flew over women's and men's garments alike, repairing rips and tears in them for pay.
The Tailor took great pride in his craft, and word spread throughout the city that he mended clothes so quickly and well, that no trace remained of their original tear.
Then, by the nimble hand of Fate, the Pickpocket and the Tailor were cross-stitched.
The Pickpocket's hands had flown into the Tailor's pocket -- and were impaled on the set of needles the Tailor kept there for his work. The Pickpocket yelled loud and long -- long enough for a constable to grab his collar and carry him off to jail.
But the Tailor had felt how light the Pickpocket's fingers were. He paid to have the Pickpocket released into his custody on probation -- and hired him to help his growing tailoring trade.
In the years that followed, the Pickpocket too became a tailor and full partner -- and by joining the society of people who traded good for good to live, became a well-respected and honored member of the community.
And, forever after, he plucked coins only from out the ears or noses of delightedly shrieking children. Thus, the greatest civilizing force in the world is the handshake.
The Warrior King, The Car Salesman
Power once strode an ancient empire in the body of a warrior.
In merciless campaigns, he rode his steed over the steppes, wielding a bloody spear.
He conquered and pillaged the lands surrounding his ancestral birthplace -- and in time became king of all he surveyed.
The stories of his terrible exploits passed into history, then into legend -- and then into dust.
Millennia later, in a modern city, power again incarnated.
In the body of a man who, though dreaming of ancient adventure, was a car salesman.
When not kowtowing to prickly, disdainful customers -- who looked up and snickered at his tight necktie, and the bulging sports coat constraining huge muscles -- he imagined galloping down upon them bareback, his pony-tailed hair free in the wind and a curving sword in hand, lopping off their heads.
Customers complained about him -- although all they could say was that they felt a chill, whenever his brilliant-green eyes alighted upon them.
So, in time, was he fired from his job as a car salesman.
Yet he found a way to stride through his modern world.
Accepting that pillage and plunder were criminal and dishonorable, he became a soldier and peacekeeper.
Although he never became a warrior king, nor passed into legend ere into dust, he found his place in his time. Thus, do not yearn for the best of times -- do your best in the time you are given.-- via The Lord of the Rings
The Leaves, The Compost
Far above the earth, a great tree arched over a mountaintop.
In a raging maelstrom of rain and light, the tree was riven. In a blast of green leaves and fire, it fell in twain.
Its broken wood was chewed by rats and grew wormy.
Great mushrooms sprouted from its broken heart, and ants chewed its leaves.
Woodpeckers tolled a staccato dirge on its greying bark, and bears stomped its roots into the mud.
As the flaking shroud of the great, fallen tree was pulverized and smashed into the earth, it began to compost.
Fermenting and darkening, it became the richest of soils upon the mountain.
And upon those loamy remnants of the great tree, the seed of a new tree alighted -- and grew great and tall. Thus, from compost arises soil -- from decay of the old, will arise the new.
The Historian, The History Maker
Students attended University in an ancient Republic.
One classmate sat in the library day and night, reading of great leaders from prior generations.
His knowledge of them grew until, one day, closing his final biography, he said, "I will teach the histories I've learned."
He joined the very same University at which he'd been taught.
And, in the march of decades, he became a historian of note.
The other classmate also sat in the library day and night, and too read of great leaders from prior generations.
Her knowledge of them also grew until, one day, closing her final biography, she said, "I will emulate the histories I've learned."
She became a leader.
And, in the march of decades, she was elected to her country's highest office. Thus, study history or make history.
The Monkey, The Sloth
Rainforest carpeted the far horizons.
A monkey -- chattering, jumpy and impetuous -- oft made fun of a thoughtful and deliberate sloth.
"You are such a slowpoke!" the monkey yelled. "Can you do this?" And it back-flipped on a high branch over the shadowy abyss.
The sloth slowly turned one eye to the monkey and replied, "That looks fun; but you should also keep your tail wrapped around a side branch -- just in case."
The monkey laughed and hurled a dungball.
One morning a serpent slithered high into the tree where the monkey and sloth lived.
It coiled and tensed before the silent, watchful sloth.
As the monkey, on a lone branch beneath them, chattered for the sloth to run away, the serpent struck.
But the sloth let go of the branch on which it sat and fell away from the serpent's fangs, swinging down by one furry leg, which had been grasping a side branch.
The sloth's swing carried it back up behind the serpent and, reaching up with its heavy foreclaw, it simply snipped the serpent's stretched-out body in two.
As the fanged head of the dead serpent tumbled down toward the agog monkey, it startled and leapt high into the air -- but, not having considered the lone branch upon which it'd been hopping and prattling, the monkey grasped for another branch in vain.
Together, the dead serpent and the screaming monkey plummeted into the tenebrous mist far below. Thus, thoughtlessness widens the hole through which the sands of our days pour -- let life pass as one considered grain after another.
The Twins, The Individuals
Queerly identical were twin boys.
Their doting parents dressed them in matching clothes.
They finished each other's sentences.
Yet, with the passing of years, one twin chose to be a teacher, the other a lawyer.
Over the decades, the first twin inspired many students, while the second twin defended many unfortunates against the corrupt and powerful.
Yet seeing them eating the same menu choices at lunch, or walking side by side on the street -- each sporting tweed coats, bow ties and small round sunglasses -- caused many a craned neck and wiped pair of spectacles.
And when they were old men, their hearts both finally stopped, one cold winter.
Yet the throng of people who marched through the snow to the teacher's funeral cared not that he'd had a twin who'd been a lawyer, but that long ago he'd been their inspiration.
And the throng of people who marched through the snow to the lawyer's funeral cared not that he'd had a twin who'd been a teacher, but that long ago he'd been their protector. Thus, what makes you different makes you important.
The Beholden, The Free
Freedom was Law.
But over generations of the Great Republic electing its representatives, the power they wielded enticed those with wealth -- both the wealth of money, and the wealth of membership -- to pour riches into their pockets.
What once was self-determining became beholden.
Over a span of but two centuries did the brilliant republic tarnish beneath the patina of rusted liberty -- its people and the best of their representatives sick with helpless caring, impotent to change, as shackled as cattle for milking.
On its border resided another republic, whose citizens saw their neighbors' long, slow fall -- and did not repeat their mistake.
Its people voted to limit their representatives' campaigns to debates, and publicly fund all campaigns, as they had long funded education and medical care.
Within but a few years, the tightening shackles on their representatives' freedom to vote their consciences unlocked and fell away -- and the people of the republic were once more in charge of its destiny.
Over the span of centuries, the republic became a beacon -- its people and representatives strong in caring, capable of change, and ranging far in the world. Thus, tyranny can be gross -- or subtle.
The Shortcut, The Straight Road
Anonymous and uncertain were the sisters' destinies.
The younger was a sharp beauty, who loved fine things. As men flocked to her, with casual dismissal she took shortcuts through their purses and hearts.
She married a corporate man -- then divorced him to marry his boss.
In middle age, her beauty faded and her husband leased a younger wife.
Now wealthy, but alone, she walked the terrazzo and parquet floors of her hollow mansion, seeing only inward.
She found in her life only what she'd brought to it -- baseness, and unremitting, upwelling regret for her expedient acts, and the injuries they caused to herself and others.
The elder sister was of softer mien, who loved fine people. As thoughtful friends, colleagues and loved ones orbited about her, with considerate deliberation she walked toward her desires straightly.
She married a thoughtful man -- and supported him with all her heart and mind.
In middle age, her career and family flowered to full bouquet.
Now wealthy in body and soul, she walked the garden paths surrounding her family home, a small grandchild's hand in hers -- and paused to look within, through the reflection of her granddaughter's lucid eyes.
She found in her life what she'd brought to it -- exaltation, and unceasing, upwelling gratitude and pride for the longer road taken, and the extra acts of kindness that healed herself and others. Thus, your path in life will mirror your spine.
The Laggard, The Lapper
Broadcast on every television in every land, the race would crown the fastest miler in the world.
The contestants lined up on the track.
The stadium roared.
The starting pistol fired, and instantly the racers leapt into motion.
But then, in all the homes, pubs, and sports bars across the globe, the images and sounds of the race winked out -- and roars of frustration bellowed from those places that day, mingled with a faint announcer's voice, "Due to a technical difficulty..."
For agonizing minutes, none except those in attendance at the very event knew what was happening in the race.
Then the satellite image was restored, still without audio.
Back to the world's eyes appeared the silent vista of a tight pack of runners -- with one lone runner loping far, far behind.
As the camera zoomed in on the laggard, laughter filled the homes, pubs and sports bars -- with yells of, "How did that pathetic runner get in this race?!"
The crowds jeered even more as the laggard fell further and further behind the pack of world-class runners straining for dominance -- and jeered most of all when the laggard simply threw up his hands, stopped and walked off the track, instead of following the others into their final lap.
Only at that moment did the audio come back on.
And only when they heard the laggard runner sob and wave to an insanely cheering crowd, did the now hushed peoples of the world understand.
The "laggard" had nearly lapped all the others. Thus, running behind others means you are much slower -- or much faster.
The False Calling, The True Calling
Her steel-trap mind, wide streak of humor, and mellifluous voice defused and swayed any angry person who had the great good fortune to hear even her smallest utterance.
Yet she had since childhood dreamed of being a ballerina.
Although she was short and stocky, she tried for years to perfect her dance.
But her efforts, though admirable for their perseverance, were ultimately to no avail.
Miserable, she retreated behind her bedroom door, spooning pistachio ice cream into her sad mouth with piston-like regularity, while halfheartedly listening to the goings on of the world funneled into a squeaking, mouse-sized AM radio.
But, one day, when war in her country seemed just around the corner, and when all voices on the radio screamed for blood, she called a radio show on her phone -- to argue for peace.
Her steel-trap mind, wide streak of humor, and mellifluous voice, useless to her as a dancer, won over all who listened to her.
And amidst growing agreement with her call for diplomacy, the producer of the broadcast -- who'd sat entranced by her suasion -- invited her to host a late-night call-in show in the nation's capital.
So was the beginning of peace in her country. Thus, where your greatest ability meets a great need, therein lies your greatness. -- via Parker Palmer
The Barker, The Talker
None know the fount of the angelic and the feral.
One man blurted out everything on his mind.
No matter that among his thoughts, circling like ravens' feathers in his soul, were insults, slanders and blame -- the unwise, the inaccurate, the unnecessary, and the unkind.
No matter -- all blew out of his head, on the first breeze from his mouth.
To many, this man seemed more a barking dog than a human being.
Another man only tithed what was on his mind.
No matter that among his thoughts, growing like gemstones in his soul, were compliments, accolades and advice.
No matter -- only the wise, the accurate, the necessary, and the kind were quarried, like veins of opal, from the deep well of his voice.
To many, this man seemed more an angel than a human being. Thus, tithe your thoughts.
The Astrologer, The Astronomer
Stardust speaks, if one but listens.
The Royal Astrologer, known throughout the realm, sat at the king's right hand. He stared at the sky, plucking from its patterns portents of import to the royal court - or at least of import about the royal court. For his premonitions about the court's goings on, its subtle politics and its romantic intrigues, the Royal Astrologer had the king's ear and was made a rich man.
However, the king's eldest advisors also kept in their employ, in small palace eyrie, an Astronomer. Sometimes confused for the Royal Astrologer by carriers of missives and by new court pages, the Astronomer predicted things of interest less to the royal court than to the realm's farmers, hunters and tradesmen. Oft his pronouncements were droll, like, "The sun will rise earlier in the day starting in two weeks." Or, "The harvest should be planted 107 days from now, not 104 -- our calendar is drifting." The Astronomer was, in fact, boring. The king kept him on only because he so much trusted his eldest advisors -- who weren't very popular at the royal court either.
But then, one terrible year, into the eastern edge of the kingdom rode a great barbarian horde, and there they pillaged and waged war on the border villages. So large was the horde that all in the kingdom -- now filling to the brim with starving refugees from the border -- feared a full invasion.
Hence did the king call every advisor and courtier, and, before all the royal court, asked his favorite, "What, O great Royal Astrologer, will be our fate should we send excursions to harass the horde before they fully assemble to invade us?"
The Royal Astrologer, sweat popping from his brow, breathed heavily as he peered into the sky and pushed around the scrolls and charts scattered on his escritoire. Then he cleared his throat and, in a tremulous voice, said, "Uhmm, you may, O Great King, be victorious by decisive attack! But! But! Beware too precipitous an action, for it, too, is risky!"
"What is this?" the king spat. "Your advice, 'tis none at all!"
Then, from the back of the throne room, a measured voice penetrated the silence.
"You need not attack at all, Sire."
All in the royal court turned to see the Astronomer, who was looking up from charts filled with intricate swirls, curlicues and numbers, and also staring into the sky, but with an ironic smile.
"Why say you so, sir?" demanded the king.
"Sire, I never have much of interest to say to you, it seems -- but this time, I do."
The Astronomer pointed toward the east.
"In five days, falling stars shall streak the eastern sky, as they have done on the same night every year since time out of memory. But these barbarians don't study the timing of the skies as I do. Send a messenger to their Chief, two days from now, telling them that the gods will send a sign to them in three nights -- a sign of their army's downfall in battle."
The astronomer paused and calmly gazed across the entire assembled court.
"You will probably turn the barbarians away without a single blow of a sword."
That summer, a horde turned home, and a Royal Astrologer was demoted in place of a Royal Astronomer. Thus, predict from fact, not fantasy.
The Riverbank, The Flood
Fertile delta meandered beneath the feet of two young farmers.
One bought a farm on the green banks of the river, and profited enormously from its cheap cost.
The other visited his friend's sprawling farm. Bare feet on green grass, he walked to the banks of the mighty river, pondering its iron, foam-crested turbulence. Then, lacing on his shoes, he hiked south closer to the city, where the river was channeled through the verdant plains by levees and canals -- and there he bought a small farm, where he barely scraped by due to the farm's expense.
The first farmer chided the second about his expensive, tiny farm.
But then the rains came unceasingly -- and the mighty, life-giving river swelled in its banks. To no avail the first farmer tried to protect his farm and his family from the torrent of rushing, blue-grey water, as it billowed over the low green banks -- and all was swept away to ruin.
So did the first farmer come to fear the river and its surges.
But where the swollen river had been leveed and channeled, the second farmer's land and family remained safe on its banks, and his small farm thrived.
So did the second farmer come to appreciate the river and its levees. Thus, let joy flow, but not flood.
The Rabble, The Legion
Like the two-chambered hearts of its fresh fish, the marketplace was the pump whose lifeblood bridged the border cities.
There the people congregated to shop and compare their politics of the day.
Word spread that one city's mayor had levied a market tax to garnish his dwindling coffers.
A small school of angry protesters swirled -- fishermen, grocers and buyers all.
Marching to the mayor's office with picket signs, they lobbed cobblestones at the cement walls of City Hall.
But the rabble eventually dispersed, returning to the marketplace, and paid pence.
The following year, word spread that the bordering city's penurious chief alderman had proposed his city entirely annex the marketplace.
A tide of angry protesters from both cities poured into the marketplace and swelled with each passing hour, swamping the storefronts, offices, buses, highways and homes.
What had been rabble now was legion.
So did the people save their marketplace. Thus, a mission shared will move a mountain.
The Coal, The Flame
Lumps of rich, black coal lay in each hand.
One lump of coal was placed in a fire, and so grew red-hot, feeding the fire.
Yet no air was blown onto the coal, and the fire began to smother.
Slowly the coal darkened, until it was clothed in ash, with only a small ember of flame buried in its deepest crevice.
The other lump of coal was also placed in a fire, and also grew red-hot, feeding the fire.
Yet a gentle breath of air was blown over the coal, when needed, stoking its heat higher and higher.
From the coal's heart burst a brilliant gout of sparks and flame, igniting tinder that had tenderly been placed by its side.
Slowly the entire coal turned searing orange, the shimmering fruit of a burning bush. Thus, tend your flame, or it shall grow cold.
The Dog, The Wolf
Orphaned, an infant wolf was raised by a kindly farmer in a ramshackle barn akimbo with dogs.
The wolf cub roamed and tussled with svelte wiener dogs, fluffy huskies, long-nosed collies and elegant greyhounds.
But inside the wolf's breast, an ancient yearning also roamed, unsated -- especially on those darkest nights, when the Milky Way was a sparkling road in the zenith of the sky, and during the full moon, when distant howls rose from the ghostly grey forested peaks surrounding their river valley.
And so, one spring day, as the sun fell to orange dusk and the dogs trotted home from the fields, the wolf -- now a young, strong adult -- stopped in his tracks and stared one last time at the kindly farmer.
The farmer, glancing back, saw the wolf's face -- then walked back alone to him, petted his head, bent down near his backward-pointed ear, and whispered gently.
"Go on, now. It's time."
The wolf looked deep into the man's eyes, then turned and ran into the gloaming.
Years afterward, on moonlit nights, the farmer heard his passionate howling, and felt his own breast overflow. Thus, follow your truest calling, to be at home in your own skin.-- via Parker Palmer
The Liar, The Truthteller Liar, one called himself with a smirk.
He did not lie only when compelled to. He lied when it was convenient. He even lied for his own amusement.
The sign by which people came to know him was the sideways slip of his eyes, whenever he spoke.
Over the years, he gained some by his lying, but lost far more -- and what he could have been in life, he never became.
For he was not a man of his word. Truthteller, the other called himself with a resolute gaze.
He told the truth except when compelled not to. He told the truth even when it was inconvenient. He even told the truth though it amused others at his expense.
The sign by which people came to know him was the straight gaze of his eyes, whenever he spoke.
Over the years, he lost some by his truthtelling, but gained far more -- and what he could have been in life, he indeed became.
For he was a man of his word. Thus, be your word.
The Prima Donna, The Cast Member
Villagers poured into the square to greet the acting troupe.
Elated to have a show in their tiny village, the villagers happily agreed to feed and pay the actors.
The lead actress, however, demanded the finest room in the mayor's house in which to sleep.
The mayor, choking off some choice words, moved into the guestroom.
The townsfolk brought heaping plates of roast duck and stuffing, and a cask of red wine for the actors' tables.
But the lead actress said nary a word to them except to remark, "This meat is rotted, and the wine sour!" -- even though the fowl had been freshly slaughtered and the wine their best-aged and tight-corked.
She demanded the largest tent, and all the townswomens' silvered mirrors, to furbish her backstage dressing room in the village square.
And, for all that, when she finally took the stage on opening night, she barged in front of the other cast members and stomped around with eyes bugging, waving her arms as if they carried two hams.
And so did the prima donna get a rotten tomato in her face -- which pleased the crowd mightily.
Another actress, however, who had only a supporting role in the cast, had graciously accepted a small room in an old farmhouse, and had thanked the villagers for their gifts of food and wine. She had eaten with them heartily, regaling them with stories of the long road and distant lands. She had thanked the village women for the small hand mirror she'd been loaned to apply her stage make-up.
And, whenever she appeared on stage, careful not to step in front of other cast members when they spoke, and when the villagers gazed upon her subtle beauty and drank in the cool and burbling stream of her voice, their careworn, jagged faces melted.
And so did the cast member get bouquets of field daisies thrown at her dainty feet. Thus, consider others, to be considered.
The Paper Dolls, The Sisters
Saleswomen attended their customers.
The first saleswoman's eyes often drifted away from her customers' faces, to the dreary cavalcade of wanderers behind their shoulders.
She listened only to her customer's orders to retrieve this or that clothing item for them -- and cared nothing for their motivations and needs.
Her customers seemed, to her, paper dolls.
So as a paper doll did her customers in turn treat her.
The second saleswoman's eyes gazed straight into her customers' faces, to regard the cavalcade of wandering thoughts in their minds.
She listened with care, hearing beneath their spoken words the emotions and needs that drove them -- and retrieved not just those items that they thought they desired, but those items she knew they would desire.
Her customers seemed, to her, sisters.
So as a sister did her customers in turn treat her. Thus, empathy and callousness magnify themselves.
The Perfect, The Imperfect
Beauteous were the birds of paradise.
The first bird of paradise preened for his harem of sycophants, who cooed and cried up to him from the grass below, as he strutted on a gilded branch above them.
The second bird of paradise, once identical to the first, had long since lost in a storm a single feather, leaving a tiny notch in his otherwise perfect golden plume. He sat on a separate branch, admired by none -- except for his agreeableness, upon which all the court did remark.
Then one day another storm fell upon them, and the first bird of paradise, his cascading golden tail caught in the wind, also lost a feather -- but a single feather -- and became in his own mind no longer perfect, although he was still as beautiful as the other bird of paradise.
Yet so saddened was he that he closed his golden eyes, flew high into the air on his now notched plumage, and murmuring, "Let it all end!" folded his rainbow wings and plummeted into the roiling sea.
So did the second bird of paradise become the most beautiful and admired bird alive -- not perfect, but enough, as always, to take one's breath away. "And," murmured his followers, "much nicer a bird, at that!" Thus, to be perfect is to be an illusion.
The Drain, The Fountain
Children dove into a swimming pool.
At the shallow end of the pool they found a hole, from which gushed a fountain of fresh, clear water.
One child stuck his head into the fountain, pressed his hand on its spout to make jets of water that he could shoot at his playmate, and pressed his back to the fountain so that his body flew forward across the pool.
So it was that the fountain became his favorite place to play.
But the second child had found another hole, in the very bottom of the far, deepest end of the pool -- so deep it lay below blue-green water.
He swam in circles far above this second hole, trying to get a better look at it.
"Why is it so deep and so quiet?" he wondered.
Finally, his curiosity irresistible, the second boy took a deep breath and dove, flailing his arms, to the bottom.
And once he touched bottom, he placed his hand over the hole.
It sucked in his whole arm, to his very shoulder.
Only with the strength borne of panic was he able to pull out his arm from the drain and swim away, to barely keep his life.
So it was that the fountain, too, became his favorite place to play. Thus, life flows between us -- and you are either a fountain, or a drain.
The Animal, The Person
Night and day were how the boys were raised.
The first boy was twisted by an angry hand, and in adulthood lived as an animal.
When this predator ultimately destroyed another, he was executed by the state.
Yet in the moment before his heart was stopped by the hands of others, he lifted his head, looked into the eyes of his victim's family, and apologized.
So did the animal invoke the person within.
The second boy was cradled by a loving hand, and in adulthood lived as a person.
When this person ultimately saved others, he was lauded by the state for the remainder of his life.
Yet in the moment before his heart was stopped by the hands of time, he lifted his head, looked into the eyes of his family, and confessed the small, daily acts of destruction he'd committed or wished for in his life.
So did the person invoke the animal within. Thus, person and animal coexist in us, never one entirely substituted for the other.
The Mediocre, The Great
Neighbors lived in adjacent row houses.
The first neighbor hopped the subway each dawn for a very small job at a very large company. At work he kept his head down, and escaped from the office at every chance.
His dream in life was to stop working.
The second neighbor stayed at home and started a small business in his basement.
His dream in life was to double his workload.
For several years the first neighbor needled the second for not going to a "real" job.
But then the next year his neighbor brought his start-up company renown, and the beginnings of great wealth.
So jealous and enraged did the first neighbor become, that, during the dark of the moon, he stole to his neighbor's basement and set it on fire.
And danced in the street as the flames rose. Thus, mediocrity is often mendacious.
The Reminder, The Remembrance
War's regimentals are retired -- but not war's remembrances.
Ex-sergeants from a long-ago war met in a hospital for military veterans, where one was a wheelchair-bound patient, and the other a volunteer.
"I carry these on my chest every day," the patient said, pointing with his trembling, gnarled hand to the rows of ribbons and medals on the left breast of his carefully tended uniform." They remind me of honor and service, and comrades long dead."
He then reached up and plucked at the old volunteer's sleeve, drew him closer, and whispered, "I have nothing in my life now, but memories of when I was a hero."
The other sergeant nodded, but replied carefully, "I too have my medals, framed and resting on the mantelpiece back home. Whenever I feel nostalgic for the days when I was a hero, I go to that case and pick through the remembrances of my past."
And then he leaned down closer.
"And, comrade, I remember that, heroes or not, it was a terrible time of loss and killing. When I look upon my medals, and recall the faces of all those who died for me to receive them, I commit my life anew -- to never permit warmongering again!" Thus, remember your past -- but do not live in it.
The Finger, The Pistol
War was afoot.
Garbed in mud-spattered camouflage ponchos, running down the alleys behind their homes, springing out of bushes and culverts, squatting in tree branches, would they oft hunt each other -- finger and thumb cocked in the shape of a gun.
"POW!" yelled the first boy, one sunny day, after he took aim against the back of the second boy, who'd been crouched behind a bush. "You're dead!" he cried, blowing away the whiff of imaginary smoke rising from his finger.
The second boy startled, then ducked and rolled, whipping around his hand.
And in it, the pistol he'd found under his father's mattress.
Never realizing it was loaded -- nor thinking much about it at all, in the childish ecstasy of War -- the second boy pointed its barrel square at his friend's chest and clicked the trigger.
So did he learn the difference between imagination and reality. Thus, reality, if not accepted, will destroy you.
The Insincere, The Sincere
Warrens of cubicles pigeonholed the dreams of better futures.
One worker, desirous of being a boss, decided to sabotage his coworkers.
Always friendly, he soon became his coworkers' trusted adviser.
One asked him, "Do you think our boss will mind if I approve this deal without him?"
"No! Go ahead and approve the deal," he replied. "Don't bosses like initiative?"
Another asked him, "Do you think my coat looks too threadbare?"
"No!" he reassured the man. "Doesn't a threadbare coat show you care more about your work than your appearance?"
When these workers were demoted, they didn't blame him -- only wistfully envied his unsullied optimism.
When he became boss, he ran his office to ruin -- for his insincerity was emulated by those under him, and office warfare became the rule.
A second worker, also desirous of being a boss, decided that spurring achievement within himself and his coworkers was the only fair way to reach that goal.
Always friendly, he, too, soon became his coworkers' trusted adviser.
One asked him, "Do you think our boss will mind if I change this policy?"
He replied, "Let's ask the boss if he'd prefer we run such policy changes by him, shall we?"
Another asked him, "Do you think my dress is too casual?"
He gently recommended, "Our dress is best regarded when it matches our professionalism."
When these workers were asked with whom they could best work as their new boss, they all named him.
When he became boss, he guided his office to new heights -- for his sincerity was emulated by those under him, and office collaboration became the rule. Thus, insincerity is a form of murder.
The Bonfire, The Library
Libertines gamboled and romped into the yoke.
Their elders gathered militias, which marched from library to library, tossing books into the street -- any book by those who did not believe as they.
The bonfire of knowledge buttressed a pillar of flame that cast the night red, while refugees -- poets, authors and playwrights all -- streamed away, in search anew for the freedom to speak their written voice.
So did the minds of the people dwindle, with naught but slogans and pamphlets to ponder.
After war befell them -- a war of burning and choice -- all their libraries were ash.
In the winter of their defeat, the elders, now adjudged criminals, were sentenced to live in the charred hulls of their mansions.
With the greening returned the exiled poets, authors, and playwrights -- carrying books, both their own and others', to rebuild freedom of voice and thought. Thus, as knowledge is locked away or free, so is the mind.
The Thrasher, The Swimmer
Home was on stilts on the riverbank.
The brothers, sandy feet perched against the porch screen, broke their placid gaze across the far banks on sight of an ice-cream truck tootling down to the small public beach among the distant reeds.
Using safety pins to clip dollar bills to their swim trunks, they dashed to the shoreline. The first-born waded in to swim directly to the far side of the river, but, behind him, his younger brother hesitated.
"Wait!" he cried, "what about the current?"
"Just swim hard!" the elder yelled back, then dove into the river, thrashing his arms toward the far beach.
But the younger brother saw how his sibling kept drifting downstream, and how he had to fight harder and harder to swim upstream just to keep traversing the river toward the far, sandy beachhead.
Turning, the younger brother ran fifty meters upstream.
Then he dove into the river and swam straight across, allowing the current to carry him downstream.
Splashing out of the water on the far side, he hailed the ice-cream truck driver and paid for two cones -- one for himself, and one for his waterlogged older brother, who only now was crawling on all fours, exhausted, onto the shore; and who, but for the bucktoothed stubbornness of youth, would surely have drowned. Thus, don't swim against currents -- including currents of the mind.
The Subhuman, The Superhuman
Semitic met Germanic.
One was jeered by jackboots as a "subhuman," and forced into ghettos and camps where many kin were murdered.
Yet this "subhuman" survived the bitterest winter, and, when freedom at last came to his country, swallowed his vengefulness and thrived, replenishing his proud and ancient race.
The other was revered by the same jackboots as a "superhuman," and enlisted in their military to fight for their cause.
Yet this "superhuman" tasted defeat in the bitterest winter, at the hands of those they considered lesser men. And, when freedom at last came to his country, he swallowed his shame and resolved to never again allow militancy and intolerance to hold sway over his proud and ancient race. Thus, "subhuman" or "superhuman," human still.
The Charm Bracelet, The Callus
During coffee break at the clothes factory, one's well-manicured fingers stroked the charms dangling from her bracelet -- the other's fingers rubbed a callus.
"My lucky bracelet will get me a promotion, and someday I'll run my own factory!" the first woman boasted.
The second woman had no money for even a manicure, let alone a charm bracelet. She'd saved her cash and invested it. She considered her lucky charm the callus acquired on her sewing hand from years of working overtime and over lunch breaks to make more money.
The woman with the charm bracelet often gossiped about the second woman.
"She's crude, with no charm! And look at her hand!"
But, since the second woman never spent much time on her coffee break or at the water cooler listening to idle gossip, she heard little of these insults, nor cared to.
Instead, she taught other industrious workers how to maximize their pay by sewing clothes in less time.
One day the foreman halted shop production and assembled the workers.
He turned to the woman with the callused hand, and said, "I am retiring, but I've watched your hard work, and the way you train the others. You will be our new shop foreman."
Then the retiring foreman turned to the first woman and said, "I've also seen your work, and heard your gossip and insults about those who've worked harder and saved their money."
He glanced down at the charm bracelet tinkling above her now sweaty, wringing hands.
"I hope your lucky charm is worth some cash. You're fired." Thus, effort is rewarded more than luck.
The Ostrich, The Prairie Dog
Faraway lands sometimes have far and away the strangest of friends -- like the Ostrich and the Prairie Dog.
One day, a dust storm that raged from horizon to horizon raced from the Western Lands toward their small nesting area.
The Prairie Dog stood, yellow paws at attention by his side, and barked.
"Head's up! A storm is coming! A big one!"
As the air swirled brown with flying grit, the Prairie Dog scuttled to a shallow hole and stuck his little body in it, with his head peeking out to keep a wary eye on the storm passing overhead.
"Hunker down and head's up, Ostrich!" he cried over the howling of earth become air.
But the Ostrich did not hunker down with his head up. Instead, he stood up on his huge, grey-pink legs, spread his wings for balance, and then bent over and jammed his head straight down into the hole where the Prairie Dog crouched.
"What are you doing?" the Prairie Dog cried, pushing back at the bird's big head.
"I'm keeping my head down, aren't I?" cried the Ostrich. "Why do I have to look at such a frightening thing as that storm?"
"No, No!" the Prairie Dog cried to his friend. "Body down, head up! Head's up!!"
But it was too late. The Ostrich squawked as the blasting wind caught his wings and swept him away, never to be seen by the Prairie Dog again. Thus, it is better to keep your head up than your head down, when storms brew -- and when do they not?
The Blue Ceiling, The Blue Sky
Grey clouds ushered the new employee into the bank.
His boss welcomed him, saying, "Innovate and you'll get ahead in the world!"
"The sky's the limit!" he exclaimed.
Saying this, the boss gestured up -- at the vaulted, white cloud-painted blue dome above the main lobby.
The employee wracked his brain for weeks to come up with an idea to save the bank money. But when he presented his idea to his coworkers and boss, they frowned and told him that the idea was unworkable.
And that he was a show-off.
He grew sullen, as his best ideas were ignored while the same poor planning that had kept the bank small was all that was permitted.
On his last day at the job, after packing his personal belongings, he overheard the boss tell a young, new worker, "The sky's the limit!"
While the bank guard, dressed in grey, ushered him out the door, cardboard box under one arm, he passed the new guy --who was staring up at the cloud-painted vaulted dome.
He paused and whispered in the new guy's ear.
"It's a ceiling."
Then he walked out into a true blue day. Thus, make sure your blue sky isn't a blue ceiling.
The Trap, The Latch
Silver cavorted amidst the fallen trunks of an aspen forest -- two minks, who lived as mates.
As they scampered and rolled in sodden leaves and pinecones, they chanced upon a strange, hollow bush.
It was made not of leaf and bark, but of hard metal wire - and inside it sat a pile of fresh, smelly minnows!
Circling the wire bush, they found a hole in it, and dashed in to feast.
But as they entered, the hole snapped shut behind them -- and they knew they were caged.
In despair, one of the minks gulped down all the minnows and paced for hours, then chewed on its own silver fur in frustration and fear, until its jaws slacked limply open.
But the other mink merely sat, sniffing and gently pawing the lip of the cage's closed door.
Then it began pulling and pushing at it -- and, finally, lifted the tiniest of latches, and so too the door.
The mink squirmed under the raised door to freedom -- with its mate's gleefully chittering head jammed so tight under the first's hindquarters that, in escaping, their two bodies looked like nothing so much as a big, furry snake. Thus, free your mind.-- via The Matrix
The Word, The Deed
Like a dark umbrella, the company cast its penumbra over the city -- and all lived in its shadow.
To his colleagues the young worker was cordially spoken, musing aloud on how fairness should rule in their promotions.
Yet, when talking to his superiors, lies dripped like venom from his salivating lips. Charging his colleagues of incompetence, he claimed their ideas as his own.
So did he live a life completely separate from the words he spoke.
But there was also a second young worker, one of the first man's colleagues. Always was he cordial and truthful, to both his colleagues and his superiors in the company.
So did he live a life inseparable from the words he spoke.
He became the target of wrath from the lying worker, who was threatened by honest word and deed. When, inevitably, their superiors confronted the honest worker about his alleged incompetence and credit-stealing, he simply replied, "I have been good and true worker. If you promote my accuser, I wish you luck -- I think you may need it from now on."
So did the man who lived his life inseparably from the words he spoke leave the company in the hands of a liar -- who, once promoted, stampeded the company over the brink of disunity and ruin.
The honest man began his own small company, setting up measures to objectively assess and reward the productivity of his own workers.
His company grew as large as his former one, but remained strong and productive -- filled to the very brim with people whose deeds matched their words. Thus, keep your deeds inseparable from your words.-- via Paul Wellstone
The Bully, The Friend
Ahead lie many paths -- and but two paths.
Two schoolmates so closely resembled the other they appeared as twin sisters.
Yet with one gaze into their eyes, none could ever confuse the two.
One schoolmate insulted and pushed others to the ground whenever they won a game at recess.
She cursed and hit others in the arm whenever they contradicted her, or told her something she hadn't known.
And she robbed from lunchboxes whatever treats others' parents had made that were tastier than hers.
The other schoolmate congratulated and lifted others into the air whenever they won a game at recess.
She laughed and patted others on the back whenever they contradicted her, or told her something she hadn't known.
And she shared from her lunchbox whatever treats her parents had made that were tastier than others'.
So did one schoolmate become reviled, and the other revered -- ultimately even by themselves. Thus, the bully fears being irrelevant -- the friend acts on that fear.
The Terns, The Turn
Flocks of arctic terns took southerly wing with snowflake's fall.
Onward the terns flew into warmer days without cease, over the great Midwestern shield of the continent.
But then, with the dawn of a high sun, a flock scattered in twain as, right through their midst, dashed a young tern -- flying north!
The leader of the tern flock swerved about, and soon they caught up to the young tern.
"Hola, young one!" the lead tern yelled above the flutter of their beating wings. "Why fly you north?"
"Does a tern not migrate north?" the younger tern barked.
"Indeed, we do," the lead tern replied, glancing back at his flock to see them all still riding his tail. "But, young one, we think your season is turned around! T'would be safer -- and more fun, I assure you! -- to head back south this season."
"But it was way too hot down South! I almost died of thirst!" the young tern cried.
"Ah, so you've been on this path a long while, then. But trust us now, young one. The South will become cooler and wetter with the coming season. To the north you will find only death."
The young tern looked over at the lead tern, with mild panic in its eyes. "But I've been on my path so long! How can I just turn around and abandon it?"
The lead tern skeewed a friendly laugh, and replied, "Just follow me, young one -- follow us all!"
And the lead tern wheeled about in the sky, heading once more toward the noon sun -- and, among his flock, followed at his right wing a once misguided but brave young tern. Thus, the life you lead now can yet lead elsewhere.
The Unkind, The Kind
Charity workers gave food and clothes to those with none.
The first charity worker, a devout man, instructed the beggars who came for a meal or shirt to first pray with him -- where he intoned, "Let us give thanks to the Lord, your provider and your soul's salvation."
Then his icy eyes, cracking open above his tightly clasped hands, glinted coldly at each beggar, as he sternly demanded, "Have you asked the Lord to save your soul?"
And only if the beggar said yes would he receive a meal or a shirt for his back.
The few who balked, or said they believed in no God, the worker sent to the back of the line to "think it over."
So did this worker's charity line slow to a trickle -- until few beggars even approached his table, heaped with food and clothing, where he stood like a crab poised for an approaching minnow.
The second charity worker was also a devout man, but felt it was not his place to demand anything from those with nothing -- and felt that all who came to him in need were kindred souls, no matter their beliefs.
He passed out meals and shirts -- and a quiet ear -- to all who approached him.
He asked from them nothing at all.
All of the beggars blessed this worker, either with their thanks, their prayers, or even their own volunteering.
So did this worker's charity line magnify, soon splitting into tributaries.
And at their headwaters stood his former beggars. Thus, kindness flows from recognizing kindredness.
The Denier, The Confessor
Parishioners and priest dwelled, in sight, yet unseen.
One year a parishioner defrauded his business partner. Misery corded his heart like a snake.
On a Sunday he confessed to his priest.
"If you truly repent of your transgression, you must confess and make amends to your colleague," said the priest.
Aghast, the man scurried from the confessional booth, and never again looked the priest in the eye, nor took communion.
In time, his obsession with hiding his fraud entwined through his soul like a fungus, until the memory of his transgression unceasingly relived itself, and he abandoned his business partner, his wife and his children -- none knowing why he could no longer look them in the eye.
Another year a second parishioner also defrauded his business partner, and likewise confessed his transgression to the priest.
Once again, his priest replied, "If you truly repent of your transgression, confess and make amends to your colleague."
The second man slowly departed the confessional and pulled from his jacket pocket a cell phone.
His hands shook as he pressed the keys to ring his partner.
"I have a confession to make to you. Meet me at the office."
After a long moment staring at its tiny, illuminated keys, the man snapped the phone shut. He turned to shake his priest's hand.
"Pray for me, father."
"I will," replied the priest, as the man departed to meet his future head on.
The following Sunday, the man returned for mass with his wife and children.
The priest took him aside after the mass, stared into his face -- and saw peace.
"Father," the man said, "my partner forgave me, and I'm making restitution."
And a smile, gone now many months, broke upon his face.
"And, father, I can look my wife and children in the eyes again!" Thus, confess your error -- or become your error.
The Fretter, The Solver
Laid off, two men trudged to the pub to nurse their ales.
The younger worker, looking down at his coal-blackened hands sadly, said to the other, "I've nae use for these anymore, except to lift a pint! What am I to do?"
The other, wiping the foam off his grey mustache, twirled its tips with his fingers, belched, and said, "Do anything you damn well want to! We've our freedom, laddie. It's not like we lost our hands, or our heads -- we only lost our jobs!"
Then the older worker stood up, threw a shilling onto the bar, hitched his overalls and cocked his cap.
"So, mate, better than worryin' it 'til we're six under, what say we start the rest o' our lives, eh?" Thus, fretting is not solving.
The Sandbag, The Levee
Mighty was the river that spanned the world, and all of history.
Two men set out to change the course of the world's river.
One man stood at the river's shore, and hefted into the air the biggest sandbag that he'd ever filled.
"Thus do I change the course of the world!" he yelled, and tossed it into the river.
The sandbag sank quietly beneath the rushing water with no trace, and the man was humbled and fled into the wilderness.
The other man stood by the river, his hands empty.
And waited.
Every rainy season he returned to the river, to gauge its course and height. Through the passages of spring he bent into a twig, and the passages of fall he frosted hoary grey.
But, in ripe time, a monsoon came -- and the river churned.
Others ran to its banks with sandbags, piling them high to keep the river on a straight course, as it strained to break free to carve a new channel.
When, in roiling rain, all had long since fled to high country, the now old man walked along the levee to the place where the world's river brimmed highest against the foundering effort of men to hold it at bay.
"Thus do I change the course of the world," he whispered, and lifted away a single, small sandbag.
And so was the mighty flow of the river of the world released, and nothing was ever the same again. Thus, it is easier to deliver what is ready to be born.
The Rabbit, The Squirrel
Born beneath the first blossoms of spring were a Rabbit and a Squirrel.
The Rabbit scampered about the forest glen and ate of the tall grass and ferns.
He consumed as if there were no tomorrows.
In time he grew quite round, graduating from hopping to loping, and then to billowing about like a cloud. But as the days grew short and cold, the Rabbit had neither grass nor fern to feast upon.
As Mother Earth's sleepy head lolled back into winter, the Rabbit grew bored -- and a bit hungry -- sitting in his burrow with icicles freezing on his fur and fat melting under it.
When spring dawned again, he crawled out with muscles as thin as the icicles of deep December.
The Squirrel, born on the same nose-tip of spring, also scampered about the glen and ate of the grass and ferns. As summer turned to fall, however, the Squirrel began to gather, bury and hide in his burrow the nuts that fell from the trees.
He saved as if there were only tomorrows.
In time he grew well muscled and strong, graduating from scampering to leaping and climbing, and then to digging like a miner. As the days grew short and cold, the Squirrel too retreated to his burrow for winter.
But over the frigid blue-white season, he stayed busy, excavating and munching his stores of nuts.
When spring dawned again, he sprung out full of life -- with muscles as rippling as the oaks of high summer. Thus, spend for no tomorrows -- or save for many.
The Powerless, The Powerful
A "right to vote" was enshrined in the Constitution of both neighboring peoples -- but immersed within a tortuous, dark palimpsest of corrupt laws.
In the first country, public officials, even the Presidency itself, were bought. Incumbency of the largest political parties was guaranteed by television ads -- which, through misdirection, calmed the people's concerns. Power, and immense, ill-gotten riches, were held in the grasp of a very few -- while many were poor, cheated of a day's pay for a day's work, and lived on acrid, despoiled land.
Its people stayed home and cursed, come voting day.
The second country, too, had been bought; its people, too, saw the poverty of their hardest workers, tasted acrid air and oily water, and saw the politicians and pundits shun all but the wealthy and a few token poor.
But its people fought back -- writing editorials, publishing alternative newspapers, talking on public television, and blogging on the Internet.
And come voting day all of them -- every one of them -- left their homes to vote.
The people, realizing they had suffered from a mass illusion of powerlessness, never again cursed the government they had themselves permitted all along -- but threw it out and elected true representatives. Thus, your vote is absolute power incarnated -- or absolute power abdicated.
The Bullseye, The Darts
Stout was to him as clear as dewy mist.
The owner of the village pub was blind as a bat.
One day an uncouth young lout -- several sheets into the wind from pub-crawling -- rose, stood on his bar table, belched loudly and yelled, "A blind man's only 'alf a man!"
The crowd rose in anger, but the owner raised his stick and said, "Let the boy be -- methinks he's never played me at darts."
As the crowd murmured, a few breaking out in broad grins, the young lout retorted, "Darts? Ye must be daft! Are ye a cretin as well as blind?!"
"I hear ye mouth, boy, but feel no money," the owner replied, slapping the bar. To cheers, the young boy brandished a 100 Euro note and slapped it down.
"Come on, ye purblind git! Best three darts wins an 'undred!"
The young boy walked to the dartboard and grabbed the darts.
"Quiet now!" yelled the blind owner to the crowd, as he followed the youth to the dartboard line, his walking stick waving back and forth.
The youth raised his hands thrice, thrice slowly aimed, and thrice let sail darts into the board.
Thunk. "One in the second ring, old fool!"
Thunk! "One in the first ring!"
Thunk!! "And the last," the youth yelled to rising murmurs and tossing heads, "a bullseye!"
As the crowd slowly quieted, the blind man turned to the youth. "Lad, aim me at the dartboard, would ye?"
Laughter rang out as the youth led the blind man by the arm to the line.
"And place me legs on the line, too, my boy?" The youth laughed, bent over and nudged the blind man's feet forward, until they touched the small line of tape. The owner bent over, took off his sandals, and wiggled his bare toes on the tape's edge -- fitting his big toes into two worn semicircles in the tape.
"And just one more wee favor, lad -- could ye tap on the bullseye, so's I can hear where it be?"
Bowing deeply, the loutish youth mugged to the crowd, and, shushing them with this finger on his lip, trotted over to the dartboard and tapped on its center.
The blind man faced to the windows.
"Nay, over here," the boy said, "not over there!" The blind owner swiveled his head to him, nodded, then looked back toward the windows, his ear cocked toward the youth's tapping finger on the dartboard.
"Thanks, laddie," the blind man said, and then, before the young lout had barely dropped his hand and taken a step back, let loose with all three darts in the space of an instant -- Thunk. Thunk! Thunk!!
The youth whipped his head around.
Three bullseyes. Thus, you can hit bullseyes -- if you keep tossing the darts.
The Tabloids, The News, The Facts
Bombed and invaded by a large country, the small country's hapless army and civilians were obliterated before the full moon scarcely turned crescent.
The people of the large country flocked to the newsstands.
And at one of these, three citizens purchased three different periodicals.
The first citizen bought a large tabloid with the headline, "To Conquer Evil!" emblazoned in red letters across images of carnage. As he read homilies in the margins of scenes of destruction, his heart swelled with pride, and he thought, "Let the tanks keep rolling!"
The second citizen bought a daily newspaper with the headline, "Leaders Say Bombs Drop To Stop Terror" printed above the faces of politicians and army generals. As he read of his public servants his heart swelled with gratitude, and he thought, "These men reluctantly donned the mantle of leadership, and protected my family and my home!"
The third citizen bought a magazine with an article entitled, "Why Did We Go To War?" containing different discussions and perspectives. One of them began, "We bombed that country in an impulsive gesture of supreme and casual arrogance." As this citizen pondered the magazine's articles, then glanced back at the newsstand's tabloids' screaming headlines, and its newspapers' regurgitated official releases, her heart swelled with judgment and determination, and she thought, "From now on I vote for leaders who will stand on the rock of objectivity, not the quicksand of feelings." Thus, to accept reality you must first discern reality.
The Dead, The Alive
Devastated, they stared into the raging torrent.
One had lost her husband.
The other, her only child.
The ravaged widow cried to the grieving mother, "I have nothing in the world! I am dead!"
She turned from life and threw herself into the torrent, and was lost.
The grieving mother stood by the banks of the river, and said to herself, "I, too, have nothing in the world. Except I am not dead. I still live!"
She turned from the torrent and threw herself into life, and was found. Thus, you still live! -- via Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Wastrel, The Thrifty
Voices merged into the roar of a city.
A young man was enticed by the sights and sounds of the street.
Each day he toiled, but after dipping into the shower at dusk and rubbing scented oil into his hair, he roamed the night -- his pockets full of his day's coin.
He tossed down his coin for new sensations. He tossed down his coin for new friends. He tossed down his coin for new women.
He tossed it with abandon.
But, so soon, the first frost of grey condensed on his verdant hair. The profligacy of youth emerged in the palimpsest of a wrinkled face.
Even more coin he tossed at the feet of others - for, now, when he did not, they averted their eyes.
In his final day, his coin had scattered with those he'd called friend.
A second young man was likewise enticed by the sights and sounds of the street.
Each day he too toiled -- but after dipping into the shower at dusk and scenting his hair, he paused, sat down in his study and tithed but a fraction of his coin to his pocket. Then into the night he went.
He picked only the most desired of new sensations to buy. He noted those friends and women who flocked to the glint of silver and gold, and turned from them.
His measured ways repulsed those whose glances dance about one's purse.
But there are men and women who are less embroidered, but of finer weave. Valuing rich laughter over rich wine, they flocked to him.
Soon the first dusting of grey too settled upon his hair. But his measured life reflected from a smooth, serene face.
And in his many days he found not simply wealth, but a wealth of friends who would toss down, for him, not their coin -- but their lives. Thus, coins are not meant to be tossed.
The Slug, The Octopus
Deep blue was the gulf wherein dwelled two neighbors -- the Slug and the Octopus.
The Slug crawled blindly along the living coral and rocks, chewing algae, while fronds of its muscular, banana-yellow flesh waved gently in the warm currents, mimicking the waving sea plants.
Yet one day, down swooped a barracuda -- and with one huge gulp, the Slug was no more.
Then the barracuda turned its baleful mien toward the Octopus, which was crawling along the sea bottom on its eight brown tentacles, overturning rocks to look for crunchy shrimp.
Yet, having eyes to see, and good ones at that, the Octopus watched the barracuda approach from above -- and quickly squirted a puff of ink, then turned its skin sandy-sea-bottom-colored, vanishing from the barracuda's sight.
Then, when the confused barracuda looked away, the Octopus quickly pulled itself with its powerful, muscular arms across the open rocks, squishing itself into a small hole beneath a boulder.
And with one calm eye the Octopus waited upon the exasperated barracuda until it gave up circling and swam away -- to find a prey much less smart. Thus, muscle is useful when mindful -- and useless when mindless.
The Closed Mind, The Opened Mind
Burnished steppes were etched with an ancient route twixt East and West.
Two farmers lived on a small desert oasis, a way station, in the deepest traverse of the route.
The first farmer was a close-minded soul. He latched his porch door to any travelers who passed by on their journey.
But the second farmer was an open-minded soul. He opened his door and his hearth to every traveler, and draped their dusty fezzes and chapeaus, their skullcaps and mitres and kaffiyehs, their topis and turbans and tams all, on his wall.
So did the second farmer hear of wondrous and terrible deeds, of adventure and misadventure -- and shared his travelers' stories.
Years rushed by with the constant desert wind.
With these years, the first farmer found the duramen of his life grown narrow and unbranched -- and in the fullness of time he died, a lone, suspicious and ignorant misanthrope.
Yet with the same rush of years, the second farmer found his heartwood ramifying to the farthest horizon and the zenith of the skies -- his conversations, his imparted wisdom, his lessons to his family, yea, even his dreams, as richly branched as the melange of travelers whom he'd long befriended.
On the day of this man's death, and for long years afterward, all who passed by doffed their headwear at his family's old farmhouse door -- and sat before his hearth for a draught and a story. Thus, knowledge knocks at your door, but you must open it.
The Disbeliever, The Believer
The young woman's ideas had never before existed.
Yet her teachers and peers ignored her genius. They refused her professorial and research jobs, precisely because her ideas were so completely unlike any they'd ever seen before.
The young genius, underemployed as a small college instructor, slowly grew to disbelieve her own ideas. Every day she told herself, "My ideas couldn't have been right, or my peers would have recognized them as so!"
So one day she put away her papers and experimental notes, in her bottom desk drawer.
A few years later, one of her brightest students asked her for a research project, as he too wanted to someday be a scientist as well as teacher. With a pang of recognition, envy and fear for the young man, who was so much like she'd been, the instructor let her student riffle through her old notes from her dusty bottom drawer. The next day, the student ran up to her, excitement pouring out of his eyes. "Teacher!" he cried, "This work is magnificent! We must confirm it! Let me help you!"
The instructor suddenly felt her eyes brim with tears, and had to blink them back. In all her years on earth, she had never heard validation. Yet all she'd needed was that one word, from just one who had eyes to see. She knew that her work was genius and had always been so, even when none, including she, believed it.
That day, the teacher and her student together began to finish her work -- and, in the fullness of time, its genius was one day recognized by all. Thus, the future will belong to those who believe in the rightness of their dreams.- via Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Wellstone
The Sheep, The Shepherds
Bearing a little girl's name, she washed their homes out to sea.
Wandering before a flat beach where once had stood their homes, the people wailed through dry, salt-caked lips.
In time, bottled water slaked their thirst -- but there was no draught for the thirst of the soul.
Men in suits came, pockets and suitcases stuffed with cash, and bought the aldermen of what remained of their town council.
Blueprints were drawn to carpet the beachfront in a fortress wall of 20-story condominiums and hotels -- where the townspeople would see only massive, 300-foot high grey walls, and smell only garbage tinged with sea-salt, when they turned to the muffled sound of the surf.
The people sat in the sand and, crying, sold their empty plots of land for a pittance.
But one man spat in disgust, and gathered all their signatures to place his name, and those of two other honest residents, on the alderman election ballot.
"Fight for your homes and your beach!" they cried.
They were elected as new aldermen of the town council.
They turned aside every stack of dollars passed toward them under the table.
They publicized every bribe of their fellow aldermen.
They argued in every council meeting and public hearing.
They voted as a bloc to hold up the corrupt high-rise developers.
They fought to rebuild their townspeople's family homes and beachfront parks.
Four years later, the three aldermen stood, shoes in hand, bare toes digging into the white sand, at the beachfront.
They gazed at the new bike paths and parkways, the restored, broad public waterfronts and robin's-egg-blue gulf waves, the family beachfront stilt-homes and the low-rise, three-story condos and hotels -- and at the joy on their people's faces.
They set down their shoes, again and again, to shake the hands of the townspeople who flocked to them.
Then they picked up their shoes, looked at each other, nodded, and walked down the beach, home. Thus, the mantle of power must sometimes be grasped by those of good intent.
The Final War, The Final Peace
The two Peoples were descendants of the same father and mother.
Over many generations, to neither People did God appear from the Heavens.
So did each People come to believe God to be different -- and that their belief was truer.
And each People converted, cowed and exterminated the other.
Proudly they marched into the future, their eyes firmly planted on their own feet.
It was a future of annihilation.
That day befell both Peoples when, in the ruin of their civilizations, just two combatants yet lived -- a young man and a young woman.
When they espied each other in the burned-out shell of a grocery, they stared hard at the other, then leapt into the other's arms -- stabbing each other through the heart with their knives.
As they lay down to die, so died their conflict -- and so died their two Peoples, and their beliefs.
In another land there also lived two other Peoples, with two beliefs, likewise warring to the precipice of annihilation.
In the ruin of the last city of their land, once again its last two combatants, a young man and woman, espied one another.
They stared hard at the other, then leapt into the other's arms -- tossing their knives away.
As they lay down to console one another, so died their conflict -- and so was born one People, of many beliefs. Thus, people must make beliefs, but beliefs must not make a people.-- via Rod Serling
The End of Days, The Beginning of Days
People believed, in this land, that Truths were whatever they wished to be true -- if wished fervently enough.
They lashed the backs of their neighbors who didn't wish fervently enough or, even more maddeningly, didn't even agree with them about what was true.
As more and more people wished more and more Truths, neighbor fought against neighbor.
Throughout this land Truths spread like a stain of multi-colored oil on clear water. And the people extended to one another their right hands -- but hatred, war and destruction lay hidden in their left hands.
So approached the End of Days.
But in those End Days, a few people stayed their falling lash.
Lifting up their neighbors, they cried, "Truth is not whatever we fervently wish -- Truth is what it is, even if we wish it otherwise."
"Are not our 'Truths' really opinions, opinions we beat into others who reasonably could believe otherwise? Is not real Truth accepting this fact?"
More and more people encouraged the search for Truth, rather than the belief in wishes.
Throughout this land Truth spread as a wellspring of cleansing water. And people extended to one another both hands -- one in salutation, the other in understanding.
So did the End of Days become, in Truth, the Beginning of Days. Thus, Truth always offers a new beginning.
The Old Wound, The Bandage
Shipped home from war, the soldier bore a crusted wound.
When his thoughts drifted back to the red mud and copper stink of distant battlefields, his hand drifted to his side -- and picked at his wound.
And it bled anew.
One day, as he rocked back and forth in a wooden chair, staring up from his front porch into the hazy blue Appalachian Mountains, he felt wetness on his fingers and stopped picking at his old wound.
He glanced down and saw a bright red freshet of blood spreading on his cotton shirt.
Blood dribbled from his clenched fist as he cried, "Enough!"
He tore off his shirt, went inside and dug through his medicine cabinet, and pulled open a bandage.
Although it was the wrong shape and size, he nonetheless fastened the bandage tight on his old wound.
"I shall not so much as touch it -- if just for a single week!"
During that week, he caught himself, again and again, reaching toward his old wound. But each time the bandage restrained his fingers, when they felt the tight compress on his skin. At night he slept, fitfully, on his right arm, so that he could not pick at his old wound when half asleep.
And in the passing of that single week, his wound partly healed.
On the seventh day, he removed the bandage.
Although it itched and although he still rubbed it, the wound had sealed -- and never bled again. Thus, your wound will never heal until you stop picking at it.
The Safe Player, The Risk Taker
Money was victory.
Playing by that rule alone, one sister strove for personal success. But cocooned in her golden chrysalis, she left the world unchanged, a near unsolvable enigma.
Fulfillment lay beyond her, like nectar deep within the long-necked flower.
The second sister strove not for money, but the momentous. Yet, having aimed high, she fell woefully short, her attempts unremembered. In her drab chrysalis of failure and poverty, she, too, saw the world unchanged and insurmountable.
She, too, could not drink of fulfillment.
Yet both sisters knew one thing -- they had lived the best way they knew how.
They were comforted in that thought -- the first sister among the army that keeps the good and draws it from the world, and the second sister among the cadre that creates the good and redraws the world.
So each sister accepted the consequences of her choice -- one failing to dare, the other daring to fail. Thus, the greatness of an attempt is entwined with the greatness of its risk -- you must dare to fail, or fail to dare.
The Wallflower, The Rose
Beauty and plainness held hands.
The breathtaking sister snared the eyes of others with only her shy regard -- but feared loving without reservation.
The one she most thought she could love wooed her for her hand in marriage. But love so frightened her that she hung back -- until love walked away.
Over the years, she hid under a fetching smile, and many wooed her -- but their love too decayed like unplucked blooms.
The more withered she grew, the further apart she held the bodies of others. After the passing of fifty springs, bereft, she lay dying alone -- her sadness consummated with mourning for a stillborn heart.
This memory of solitude she bore to her end.
The plain sister snared the eyes of others only with her wit -- but flowered into loving without reservation.
She wooed the one she most loved into marrying her. Over the years, their love, though childless, perennially bloomed.
The more withered she and her spouse grew, the closer their bodies held each other. After the passing of fifty summers, with a kiss on her forehead and his hand in hers, her beloved died. Bereft, and without children, she lay dying alone -- but her sadness was tinged with joy in remembrance of vibrant hearts.
This memory of love carried her to her end. Thus, never fear love.
The Seed, The Blossom
Small and exquisite, the Japanese garden was tended daily by a master gardener.
One spring day, as the master gardener was feeding his albino carp in the pond, a street urchin spied on him from behind a boulder.
The master gardener yelled over his shoulder, "If you plan to stare at me all day, help me work!"
So did the boy become the master gardener's apprentice.
Over the next week, the boy dutifully planted all different sorts of seeds wherever the master gardener instructed him to. But he saw only the soft dark earth covering the dormant seeds, and not a single plant. Red-faced with frustration, the apprentice eventually blurted out to the master gardener, "Sensei, how can I learn gardening? All I see is dirt!"
The master gardener looked long at the boy, and then said, "Very well. I will teach you the most important lesson of all."
The gardener opened two small pouches strung from his belt, and gestured to the boy.
"Come here and open both your hands."
As the boy approached with his hands outstretched, into one palm the old gardener poured a small pile of perfect, gem-like black seeds, and into the other palm he dropped a clump of rough, dirty-brown seeds.
"Plant these seeds, over behind that boulder where you first popped up! That will be your garden!"
"In what order or arrangement should I plant them, Sensei?" the boy asked.
"How should I know? It's your garden!" And the old man returned to stroking the heads of his carp, who rose like cream from the tea-brown depths of the pond to greet him.
The boy stared down at his palms, and, seeing the lustrous beauty of the small, black, pearl-like seeds, decided to plant those in a broad circle -- to surround the ugly brown seeds.
Later that month, the rains fell, and the Japanese garden burst with life.
But as the boy raced one morning to his garden to see his circle of blossoms bloom, he skidded to a halt -- in horror.
Before him rose a monstrous, stinking thatch of rotting black petals, coated in buzzing flies.
With a cry frozen on his lips, he turned in utter dismay to the gardener, who had been sitting on the boulder, waiting for him.
The gardener took one deep look into the boy's heart, and smiled gently. Then, reaching for his walking cane, with a swift whack he lopped off the festering blossoms -- to reveal a small patch of the most beautiful blue blossoms the boy had ever seen, sitting long forgotten in the center, where he had buried and forgotten the ugly brown seeds.
"Oh, Sensei, what have I done?" the boy sighed.
"You've learned the most important lesson of all, my son," the old man said, placing a hand on his apprentice's head. "And I'm not just talking about gardening." Thus, learn what it is that you sow -- for you shall reap it.
The Outward Eye, The Inward Eye
The functionary administered a small group of government workers.
But he ruled his office as if it were a fiefdom -- and he its lowest serf.
All who worked for him were lauded when they voiced new ideas -- even poor or unoriginal ones.
All who worked for him were paid for time spent with their families -- even company time.
All who worked for him were promoted for planning with each other -- even when their plans excluded him.
And so inevitably came the day when all who worked for him mourned when he, and they, were all fired -- to be replaced by a supervisor who cared to supervise and workers who cared to work. Thus, the eye bent only outward sees but half of reality -- the world, but not the self.
The Inward Eye, The Outward Eye
The functionary administered a small group of government workers.
But he ruled his office as if it were a fiefdom -- and he its overlord.
All who worked for him were berated when they voiced new ideas -- for those ideas weren't his.
All who worked for him were docked pay for time spent with their families -- for those times weren't his.
All who worked for him were demoted for planning with each other -- for those plans weren't his.
And so inevitably came the day when all who worked for him rejoiced when he was fired -- to be replaced by a supervisor who cared about their ideas, their time and their plans. Thus, the eye bent only inward sees but half of reality -- the self, but not the world.
The Frog, The Salamander
Bubbly brook was pub to brilliant mates -- a shamrock Frog and a rose Salamander.
The Frog was quite the bounder, hopping high over rock and rivulet, while the Salamander sedately crawled over slick stone and swam beneath the frothing water.
One day the Salamander chanced upon a small, still pool full of young mosquito larvae, wriggling beneath the water.
He joyfully called for his friend, who, hearing his burbling call, hopped toward the sound of his voice.
They feasted on the mosquito larvae until round-bellied, and yet the pool was barely depleted.
"We must come back 'ere tomorrow, and the day after -- and the day after that!" chuffed the Frog.
The Salamander agreed heartily, and burbled, "We must remember where this pool is!"
"Aye, mate!" yelled the Frog, as he leapt far and high away toward the woods. The Salamander faintly heard the Frog's receding words, "Oh, I'll remember this watering hole, sure enough!"
But the Salamander sat and pondered, and burbled to himself, "This is indeed a very small pool."
So the Salamander, crawling slowly away from the pool toward his nest, marked the rocks and sod with his own skin slime, to ensure he would find the pool tomorrow.
The next day, the Salamander retraced his path to the pool of tasty larvae - and halfway there he saw in the distance the tiny green body of the Frog bouncing high in the air this way and that, and heard his friend's curses. "Where in the sod is that damnable pool!? I've hopped everywhere!"
Chuckling, the Salamander finished sussing out his slime trail, lifted his crimson face to the wind and called his exasperated, hopping-mad mate over to feast. Thus, to know where you're going, know where you've been and where you are.
The Open Door, The Closed Door
Ruins of a temple to gods now lost stood before the brash explorer.
Therein lay a great hall, ending in two doors.
One of the doors, small and plain, was wide open.
The other, a large and ornately gilded door, was barred shut.
The explorer bent over and glanced beyond the small, wooden-slat door and saw but an empty chamber in which lay overturned a shabby straw basket.
"Bah!" his disgust echoed, in a procession of ghostly catcalls, through the cavernous cathedral.
He turned to the ornate, barred door with his crowbar.
Levering the heavy bar upright on its stony hinge, he quickly pulled the gilded door open, and ran into a large, dark chamber.
And promptly fell into a deep pit, to his death.
Slowly, the heavy bar tipped back and gradually pushed the gilded door closed, once more.
So did the temple's greatest treasure -- a yellow diamond as large as an owl's unblinking eye -- lie undiscovered in the bottom of the small, shabby straw basket, lying beyond a plain, wide-open door. Thus, wise direction comes not just from open doors, but closed doors.
The Bad Example, The Good Example
They taught in simple, thatch-roofed adobe classrooms in the sun-baked village.
The first teacher was dried to the dregs in the cracked cup of his soul.
He dragged into his classroom every morning.
He called his students and colleagues fools and wastrels.
Students dreaded his classes and his dismissive, demeaning tales of the distant world.
The second teacher brimmed to the rim of his soul.
He bounded into his classroom each morning.
He treated his students and colleagues with respect and compassion.
Students flocked to his classes, to learn from him about a distant world -- but one, due to him, seemingly close enough to embrace.
The students learned well from both teachers.
From the first, they learned the wrong way to live and to think.
And from the second, they learned the right way. Thus, you cannot avoid being an example to others -- your choice is whether to be a good or bad one.-- via Harvey Mackay
The Husk, The Fruit
Come autumn, the world was once a rainbow.
In this forest world lived bees, to pollinate the flowering trees; fruits, to dangle from their branches; and bobbing birds, to eat the fruits and scatter their seeds to beyond the horizon.
Here a bird chanced upon two fruits, both newly fallen between the feet of a great, gnarled baobab.
The bird cocked its head toward one fruit, then toward the other, and saw they were equally gilded with a shining velvet blush -- unlike the days-old fruits that lay wrinkled nearby.
So did the bird jab its beak into the first fruit with abandon.
But then the bird shrieked, as the fruit's beautiful husk fell in twain.
Revealing a riven and rotting core.
The fruit's black, stinking halves rocked side by side on the carpet of grass, then lay still.
The bird shook its head and flapped its wings to clear away the smell.
Then, with a tremulous peep, the bird slowly turned to the other fruit, picking only gingerly at its skin -- until it rewarded the bird with a dollop of ripe, rich fruit from its center.
So did the bird feast -- but always afterward with an eye for rot masked by the husk of beauty. Thus, appear as what you are.
The Evil, The Good
She sought the source of Evil and Good.
The Seeker traveled to houses of religion, and asked the pastors, priests, rabbis and imams, "What is the source of Evil and Good?" They replied, "Evil stems from not believing in our God, and Good from believing in Him."
The Seeker traveled to lawmakers and dictators, and asked them, "What is the source of Evil and Good?" They replied, "Evil stems from not obeying our laws, and Good from obeying them."
The Seeker traveled to communes, and asked those gathered there, "What is the source of Evil and Good?" They replied, "Evil stems from property and greed, while Good stems from sharing and self-sacrifice."
The Seeker traveled to gated communities, and asked their owners, "What is the source of Evil and Good?" They replied, "Evil stems from sharing and self-sacrifice, while Good stems from property and greed."
The Seeker grew confused, and wandered for days into the countryside. She squatted by the side of a dirt road, and told herself, "I will accept the opinion of the very next person to walk by!"
She looked up the road and saw, emerging from the thrumming waves of heat and cricket song, a gnarled old man in a dusty straw hat, shuffling with a cane. As he passed near, she plucked at his sleeve.
"Old man! Please tell me! What is the source of Evil and Good?!"
In the silence of the crickets' stillness, the old man stopped and looked at her face, his squinty eyes as impenetrable as dark trenches in the earth. His mouth broke into a harmonica-like grin. "The source of Evil...and Good? If you ask me...think for yourself!"
"But you didn't answer my question," the Seeker lamented.
"Oh, I did, young one. I did!" said the old man, who winked as he walked away. Thus, Evil is the unreasoning, Good the reasoning.
The Scoffer, The Judger
Leather chairs squealed in unison as the team sat down in the boardroom.
"Speak your minds," prompted the Chairman, glancing at his watch and then turning his seat to gaze out at the blue sky.
The junior team member leapt into the breach. Ideas percolated and brimmed from him like mocha from a coffee machine, and his eyes began to sparkle.
Then a senior team member dismissively twisted off the spigot.
"You're really still quite naïve, aren't you? That notion is not only unoriginal, but unworkable."
Idea upon idea twisted in asphyxiation under his quick and murderous garrote.
Then the Chairman spun his leather seat back to the table, his eyes capturing the blue of the sky.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I like most of our youngest member's ideas -- they have merit, and potential."
The Chairman leaned forward and looked straight at the junior team member -- past the suddenly subdued critic -- and voiced the three most galvanizing words in the world.
"Tell me more."
Idea upon idea drew new breath under his steady and nurturing inspiration. Thus, scoffing is not judgment, but destruction.
The Privileged, The Underprivileged
Opposite poles of the world were the birthplaces of two girls.
The first girl, bright of mind and heart, was born on a continent of wealth.
She attended a private school with individual tutors in the languages and sciences. Her parents smoothed the way, with money, for her matriculation at the best university in the world -- where she excelled. She relied on family connections to be placed in a major law firm upon graduation, with a starting salary one thousand-fold larger than those in lands on the opposite side of the world.
In time, she passed on the fruit of her many achievements to her children.
The second girl, equally bright of mind and heart, was born, in that distant pole of the world, on a continent of poverty.
She was barred from schooling because she was a girl -- so the languages and sciences remained to her only a fog of wonderment and confusion. Instead, her parents sold her into forced prostitution to ensure her brothers would prosper. From a small brothel waiting room, she quietly watched the television images of well-dressed students walking the halls of universities around the world. Once her body was used up by men and shriveled from AIDS, she was fortunate to be placed in a hospice so that she wouldn't die in a gutter. Lying in her sickbed, she overheard that women at the far end of the world made one thousand-fold more money -- for one person -- than the money her entire hospice made in a year. Irony briefly transformed her wan countenance.
In time, she passed on, the fruit of her many possible achievements plucked by not a single soul. Thus, people can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps -- if they've been given boots.
The Insulter, The Debater
Paragons of rhetoric, they were nonpareil.
One of the brothers wielded sarcasm like a rapier.
Oft he exclaimed, "Do plan on suing your lobotomist!" or, "Are you a traitor or just a fool, to spout such hogwash?"
Although his debate coach often interjected, "You've still not made any point," or, "You've proven nothing with an insult," the brother would simmer -- steam growing behind his eyes -- until, with a burst of abandon, his black wit exploded once again into the faces of his agog listeners.
So did this brother become a master of the razor-tongue -- and a widely disliked and distrusted man -- by demolishing his adversaries.
The second of the brothers wielded reason like a forceps.
Oft he proclaimed, "Your point is unfounded, for these reasons..." or, "These facts support the need for change."
When others called his arguments "ridiculous" he smoothly replied, with a clear, slightly condescending gaze, "They are not only not ridiculous, but they are correct." The ensuing burst of impotent steam that issued from his opponents was, to him, a refreshing sauna.
So did this brother become a master of the golden-tongue -- and a widely respected and trusted man -- by arguing against arguments, not against arguers. Thus, ad hominem is against humanity.
The Moneyed Politician, The Lone Candidate
Voting was the pride of the tribespeople.
They called their leaders "the People's servants."
A tribeswoman saw one day that the law allowing pig farms to dump their manure in the village's stream saved money for the farms' owners but sickened the small children, and would someday sicken the entire tribe.
"It is time for me to run for leader, to repeal this law and help my tribe," she announced.
As a lone candidate she met -- one by one -- as many tribespeople as she could before Election Day.
But her opponent was a moneyed politician.
As lawmaker he'd passed the very same law the lone candidate sought to repeal. The pig farmers, who'd profited greatly when no longer required to cart away and bury their manure, lavished him with gold coins.
With this gold the moneyed politician paid for rallies -- hiring poor people to attend and cheer. He passed out free food. He printed pamphlets proclaiming he was "A Leader for All the People."
And he paid others to stand in the Village Square and heckle the lone candidate for her "ignorant" rejection of support for the pig farmers.
Come Election Day, the lone candidate -- and her dream of a clean and healthy tribe -- was defeated. The People indeed had had the vote -- but one dictated by enticements and advertisements.
Over the next decade, the tribespeople watched numbly as illness decimated them. Even the pig farmers eventually went bankrupt as the people -- their own customers -- fled to distant unspoiled lands.
During all those years, the lone candidate's voice went unheard -- for lack of money. Thus, principal can make your decision, but only principle can make your decision right.
The Spinning Cog, The Toothless Cog
Revolving makes one sad.
The Cog knew it.
The Machine spun the Cog around and around, and the Cog grew dizzy and disoriented.
It knew only that it hated its job, but saw nothing better for it -- because it was part of The Machine.
And The Machine was all that counted -- or so the Cog thought.
Then, one stuttering cycle, one of its teeth got knocked out.
The Cog had lost a tooth!
Once part of The Machine, it was cast into the dirt.
The broken Cog sat, rusting and still, facing the empty sky.
It knew the hopeless peace of utter uselessness.
But one day the Cog was picked up by a young gypsy, spit-scoured and oily hair-polished to a burnished silver sheen, and a leather string knotted over the gap in its teeth.
For the remainder of its days it dangled under her billowing shirt, to come out every night before the hearth and make the orange firelight dance in smoky tents. Thus, new uses may replace, and even better, those lost.
The Pothole Filler, The Pathfinder
Hewn from the same oak as their pioneer settlement lived two men.
One man contentedly filled potholes in the ruts that the wagons and horses followed into the wilderness.
He dreamed of laying down cobblestones on the paths -- so that all could follow with ease those who went first.
The other man was content only to hew those first paths into the wild -- to go where none had gone before, to see what none had seen.
He dreamed of hewing a path to an undiscovered country never before trod by the foot of man.
The two men met one day in the town saloon.
"What do you, Sir?" the first asked.
"I'm a Pathfinder," said the other, proudly. "And what do you, Sir?"
"Ah! We are brothers! For I am a Pothole Filler!" said the first, his eyes shining just as brightly.
The two smiled and raised their glasses to toast one another -- for a new road needs both its maker and its paver. Thus, new paths must be both carved and paved.
The Puppet, The Puppeteer
Clay glowed as if it were angelic flesh in the hands of the master ceramicist.
One day the artist created a puppet-doll of such lustrous form and beauty that even he himself was taken aback.
He considered destroying it, because all the men who saw it fell in love with it, and all the women who saw it cast themselves into bed, crying in envy.
But eventually, for need of money, the artist sold the puppet-doll to a baron -- who paid half his fortune to dangle it in his trembling hands.
And thus, over the years, did the wealthy baron -- now become a recluse whispered about in shame by his family, courtiers and servants -- sit alone every day to tea with his lovely puppet-doll.
And every night he lay alone in his sumptuous bed, holding once more his beauty's strings, to stir her clay body -- until one day, old and frail, he too collapsed into her cold arms, where their limbs lay akimbo, entwined. Thus, you are your own person -- or another's puppet.
The Bowed Arrow, The Straight Arrow
Two arrows were fashioned by the greatest archery instructor of an ancient kingdom.
Both arrows he carved from the finest cedar, tipped with the sharpest stone, and fletched with the most perfect and brilliant of feathers.
Yet the master archer's students watched, in growing amusement, as he then heated the shaft of one arrow over a candle, bending it until it was deeply bowed.
Silently, he gave his finest, most confident student the bowed arrow -- and to his worst, most self-doubting student he gave the straight arrow.
"Shoot at the target!" he ordered his dumbfounded charges.
The finest student of the master archer stepped forward, but, no longer so confident, slowly nocked the bent arrow on his bow, and gingerly fired it at the distant target.
The bowed arrow spun crazily in the air and fell to the earth only a few feet away.
"Now you!" the master pointed toward the self-doubting student.
His worst student, now frankly relieved, nocked the straight arrow, carefully aimed at the distant target, and calmly released it to fly far, straight and true into the target.
The class turned to the master archer.
He stared at them all and answered, "Choose wisely which kind of arrow you shall carry in the quiver of your soul!" Thus, do not warp what must be straight.
The Log Cabin, The Breadfruit Tree
Tropical breezes wafted the salt-encrusted beard of the castaway, who dwelled on his Lilliputian island with but one, sole companion.
A great, spreading breadfruit tree.
As the years passed, the man became restless. Idling under the shade of the vast tree and chewing on a breadfruit, he said to himself, "I am the master of this domain! I want to have a nice house to prove I am a landowner!"
These thoughts stewed in his mind, until, one day, he suddenly grabbed a sharp stone from the black sand and, raising it high above his head, split the breadfruit tree into lumber.
He built a log cabin from the tree's trunk and branches, and placed a carved tree-bark crest, with his name engraved on it, on the archway of his front door. He read his name aloud and then danced about his new house, taking care not to trip over the hoards of fallen breadfruits.
He then piled all the many fallen breadfruits into his new kitchen shelves, cupboards, tabletops and bins. And with an ache in his back, he finally sat down on his new, wooden bed with its soft mattress made of the breadfruit tree's broad leaves, and he was finally happy -- happier than he had ever been.
That is, until he finished all the breadfruit. Thus, the world is infinite only in dreams. To live in the world, the world must live too.
The Dreamer, The Doer
For "Discovery, fame and fortune!" toasted two scientists.
The first scientist filled reams of notebooks with new ideas -- some of which had never before been seen on earth.
But none knew it.
Because in pursuit of ever-newer ideas he'd never tested his old ones.
Over the years he grew old and unremarked, and on his deathbed handed over his notebooks to his few students.
"Learn from my error!" he said to them. "Your ideas and works don't exist until they are published -- so get started!"
Then, muttering, "Castles...castles in the air," he lay down his head, closed his eyes, and died.
The second scientist also wrote notebooks -- filled with somewhat fewer new ideas.
But he made time to pursue each idea with experiments.
Over the years he published his best few ideas with his research, and, as a result, one day attained some measure of fame and fortune. On his deathbed, he handed over his unfinished ideas to his many students.
"Emulate what I have done, and you too may attain what I have."
Then he smiled, lay down his head, closed his eyes, and dreamed the only dream in his life he'd ne'er pursue. Thus, there's just one way to go from A to C. B.
The Peacock, The Bowerbird
In a wooded glen lived a Peacock and a Bowerbird.
The Peacock pranced to a clearing in the glen, fanned his brilliant tail-feathers of rainbow eyes, and shook them all about, yelling, "I am the greatest bird in the world! Come to me, maidens!"
Around and around he danced in the glen, shaking his beautiful feathers -- but so violently did he shake them, that several popped out of his behind, and fell to the ground. Yet so enamored was the Peacock at his own glory, that he cared not about the gaps in his plumage, even thinking them improvements -- and the maiden birds flew overhead, laughed, and winged on.
The Bowerbird, meanwhile, hardly noticeable in his nondescript, drab feathers, silently built a roomy nest with a smooth, curved arch of twigs overhead. He worked every day, and when his bower was done, stood silently to one side, and waited. Maidens flew down and stepped into his handiwork, and regarded the fine weave of the twigs in its arch. The most beautiful of all the maiden birds was very pleased -- and remained in his bower as his mate.
Yet the Bowerbird had crowed not one word of himself -- nor shaken about a single tail-feather. Thus, obsession is never more dangerous than when its subject is oneself.
The Totalitarian, The Free
Twin countries nestled against each other in the womb.
The first country, at the insistence of its army, installed a charismatic dictator.
Garbed in green fatigues, he told the people what kind of work they must do, and who would benefit from it.
He was overthrown and replaced by another dictator, who, regaled in satin robes, told them what kind of belief they must have.
He, too, was overthrown, and replaced by yet a third dictator, who, cloaked in a white hood, told them what kind of color people they must marry.
The country teetered like a refugee dragged on his final, long march.
And in the dark of night, fearing the knock at their door, never did its people know peace in their beds.
But the second country, at the insistence of its own charismatic leader, installed a Constitution of individual, religious, racial, social, and environmental rights, protected by a representational government.
Then the leader hung up his pressed suit and retired to his farm.
This country did not teeter toward enslavement and persecution of its people for what work they did, what belief they held, or what color they were.
It grew innovative, strong and free.
And in the dark of night, fearing no knock at their door, always did its people know peace in their beds. Thus, one can be chained in many ways, but it is all one chain -- upon reasoned choice.
The Preacher, The Listener
Just married was the cosseted babe of the family.
Her heart thumped when thinking of married life, and she confessed so to her sisters in a small, empty room off the narthex of their church, where the wedding party had congregated.
"I worry so much about how my husband may treat me, and what he'll expect of me!" she cried, twisting her wedding ring.
Her eldest sister peered over her hymnal glasses archly, to see her little sister's face. Then, like a budgie tantalized by a peach, in a staring, wide-eyed sway she began to regale the new bride with horrifying tales of browbeaten wives that she'd overheard in her years (of which there'd been many).
The bride was not mollified -- indeed, she began to turn as white as her gown.
Then the middle sister intervened.
"Forget our eldest's tall tales! Remember, she doesn't know your husband as well as you do!"
Touching her sister's hand gently to calm her, she continued, "So tell me, what do you think your husband wants from your marriage? And what do you want yourself, dear sister?"
So with a sigh of relief, the young bride debated her own recollections, hopes and fears out loud to her sibling.
And with her sister's calm questioning, the bride's train of thought gently unfurled, and she knew anew what she had known, unbeknownst, all along. Thus, sometimes you must preach with your ear.
The Bridge Burner, The Bridge Builder
Deep was the chasm that split in twain the land.
A calm and friendly man wondered what manner of people lived across the chasm -- and so he built a bridge to span it.
For weeks he toiled, hammering pitons and hurling grapplers and ropes across the ravine, then slowly knotting boards into the suspended cords -- for the feet of the would-be travelers who eagerly gathered to watch him build.
Yet a second man, who lived in a lean-to on the opposite side of the ravine, had picked his small parcel of land to be as far from humanity as he could get. Only facing the abyss did he feel comfortable.
Never had he cared to know what manner of people lived across the chasm -- nor even, for that matter, what kind lived in his own land.
As he scrutinized the builder's bridge taking shape, and the eager prospective travelers climbing the hills to the ravine's edge to watch, he grew eager himself -- toward a darker purpose.
One black night he stole to the edge of the ravine with a single candle.
With a curse spit from bitter lips, he torched the ropes of the bridge. Although the cords could suspend a dozen oxen in the air, they could not withstand the flame of malice.
So were the long days of bridge-building undone by one moment of bridge-burning. Thus, calmness, like wood, undergirds all -- while anger, like flame, strews from all but ashes.
The One Side, The Other Side
Bestriding the fence bordering two men's lands grew a spreading pecan tree.
Great heaps of nuts fell onto the sward beneath its branches.
One of the men saw the other gathering pecans that had fallen on the far side of the fence. He ran to the fence, breathlessly shouting, "Stop! Those are my tree's nuts!"
Fulminating red, the other man grasped the fence, leaned over it and yelled back, "These pecans fell on my side of the fence, so they're mine!"
As the two men raged, their wives hurried over and whispered to each other, hand in hand.
Then they turned to their husbands and, plucking their sleeves, shushed them, saying, "It's one's tree, but the other's land! If you can't bring yourselves to share your nuts, you will do whatever the local ordinances say is the legal resolution -- so call City Hall and ask them what it is!" Thus, there are usually two sides to an argument -- and you must consider both.
The Bigoted Parent, The Friendly Child
Hating all who had different-colored skin than he, a man believed without question that they were impulsive, murderous, unthinking fools.
All these things he tried to teach his only daughter.
But his daughter was quiet and thoughtful.
She tried, but could not see what her father was talking about.
Instead, she saw that her differently colored classmates at school were just as thoughtful, kind and smart as anyone, and perhaps even saintlier, given how shabbily they were treated by some of the teachers and other grownups who thought like her father.
So the daughter decided to befriend all of her classmates, regardless of their skin color or ability, or even their attitudes about her.
As she grew in years, so too did she grow in the esteem of all who crossed her path in life.
All but in her father's.
He rejected her for her friendship with others of different colors. Never did he see or speak to his own grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who, over the generations, became a happy mix of all different hues, beliefs and creeds, tied together by the strongest of cords -- tolerance of uniqueness. Thus, to truly see a person you must open your eyes.
The Tragic, The Comic
Marriage to a widower with seven children was Fate's blessing.
But the young wife's husband died, leaving her alone to raise all seven.
She boiled in anger and fear, grew bitter at her responsibility, and proclaimed the tragedy of her life to all her neighbors.
Her friends deserted her, and her stepchildren feared her, soon leaving for lives of their own.
She shriveled into an old, angry spinster, cheated of her youth and beauty.
Fate being wedded to Irony, in a neighboring village a young woman received the same blessing.
Her new husband likewise died soon thereafter, leaving her alone to raise all seven stepchildren.
She gazed at them often, but, instead of growing angry, fearful and bitter, as she sometimes was tempted to do in moments of doubt and difficulty, she decided instead to chuckle at what Fate had cast her way.
She committed to being their mother, and to love all seven fiercely, proclaiming to all her neighbors that her husband had left her seven great gifts.
Her friends remained at her side, and her stepchildren grew tall, happy and strong, staying close to her all their lives.
She became a revered family head, radiating happiness at the miraculous cloth she'd spun from the loose threads of Fate. Thus, fate is spun by emotion into cobwebs, and by reason into silk.
The Boulder, The Dodger
Peaking a large hill sat a rotund boulder.
Below, on the slope of the hill, perched neighboring shanties wherein lived two old men.
Every day, as the men put out folding chairs to sit in the sun and watch the day pass by, the first old man pointed his chair downhill toward the passing cars and bicyclists below.
But the second old man pointed his chair sideways, to keep one eye on the peak of the hill.
The first old man needled him. "Old coot, why do you always stare up at that boulder?"
"I can't help myself!" the second old man cried, "I just know it will crush me someday!"
The first old man laughed over his shoulder. "You'll hear it coming early enough to dodge it! And it has hundreds of paths to take down this hill. Why are you so worried it'll aim straight for your old bones?"
But the second old man could never stop staring back at it, and could never quit trembling at even the faintest noise from above.
And so, one day he himself toppled over and rolled, dead, down the hill.
Many years later the boulder did indeed dislodge, rolling backwards a few feet out of sight behind the top of the hill -- all while the first old man remained sound asleep, undisturbed, in his bed. Thus, the most terrible things in our lives usually never happen. -- via Montaigne
The Car, The Steering Wheel
Exit the autobahn by the pine grove, and on the right is the blanched, empty shell of an auto repair shop.
Walking down the exit ramp and through the pines, a man of little means once approached the shop mechanic and offered half his meager savings to repair his decrepit car, broken down on the autobahn.
The mechanic straightly aided the poor man.
Zooming into the shop, gunning his engine and spinning his wheels on the gravel, a rich man also once approached the mechanic for a minor repair.
But the rich man taunted and insulted the mechanic -- offering him only a pittance to repair his luxury car, refusing to pay fair price, and calling his shop a "pig sty."
The mechanic's red face became deadly quiet and white, and his fists lowered to his side.
He murmured to the rich man, "Whatever you say," then turned to repair the problem -- but also detached the steering wheel from its linkage.
So did the mechanic lie to the car owner's face, "You're all fixed," then stand back and brim with vengeful glee.
The rich man snatched up his keys, hopped behind the wheel, raced the engine, jammed the clutch, and smashed his luxury car straight into the pine grove. Thus, a lie is the gift of a hurtling engine with no steering.
The Kite, The Plane
Central Park made the metropolis great.
There two children played -- a boy with a kite, and a girl with a toy plane.
The boy ran into the breeze, unspooling the string tethering his kite, which sailed high into the grey sky, gliding on the wind above him.
"Look!" the boy yelled. "Look how high my kite can go!"
But suddenly the churning wind switched direction, and his kite plummeted like a stone, and was dashed into pieces at the boy's feet.
He plopped down in the grass, and cried.
The girl stood still against the wind, holding her small plane with its long, sturdy wings and battery-powered propeller, then placed her plane on the ground and stepped back.
Reaching into her pocket, she withdrew a small remote control, and pressed its button.
The plane's propeller erupted, buzzing, into life -- and the plane rolled down the grass on its undercarriage.
Then the girl pulled back a lever on the remote control, and the plane, too, sailed high into the grey sky, gliding on the wind.
But when the turbulent breezes shifted direction, so did the little girl shift her rudder.
The plane channeled the crosswinds, and flew on. Thus, emotion is the wind you must channel to fly.
The Chain, The Leash
Wooden slats were the boundary of his green universe.
All his life, the dog had lived and played in the large backyard of an urban home nestled in the center of busy streets.
Day and night, the dog's ears perked up at the mysterious and exciting noises and scents around him.
Squeals preceded clouds of bitter rubber smell.
Hissing static, voices and rhythmic thumping blew acrid wafts of burnt leaf.
And always there was the great rushing and honking of unseen, oily metallic-smelling behemoths.
The dog often wondered why he was always kept tethered by his collar at night to a post buried in the middle of the yard.
He yearned to break free.
And so, one night, the dog pulled and bit his tether so hard that it tore -- and fell away.
Free from all restraint, the dog yelped in disbelieving joy.
He dashed around and around the yard. None called him to heel.
Then, smelling and hearing the night, he raced to the end of the universe and leaped.
Sailing over the high, backyard fence, he fell, breathlessly panting, into the heart of mystery.
A squeal of rubber tires and blinding lights rushed down upon him, and, in death, he took wing. Thus, know when you are chained and when you are leashed.
The Ant, The Cricket
In a small backyard dwelled an Ant and a Cricket.
The Ant's industry provided homes and well-stocked pantries for her large family -- while the Cricket's mellifluous song brought joy to all who heard it.
The Ant lived a long life of comfort, warmth, loved ones and many children.
The Cricket lived but a brief life. Yet in spite of his sad ending in hunger and cold, he gave to the Ant -- and to all who'd heard his song -- the memory of dulcet beauty and mystery in their lives. Thus, industry and art both have value -- one to the body, the other to the spirit.
The Herbicide, The Fertilizer
Verdancy dwelt amidst banality.
Blooming within a seemingly endless suburban tract of clipped-grass lawns was a profuse garden, in the yard of an old curmudgeon.
Each day that remained to him, he carefully tended his ferns and flowers rare -- orchid, iris, bleeding heart, money plant, lamb's ear, impatiens, delphinium, artemisia, salvia, snapdragon and honeysuckle.
But one day, the old man rose not from bed -- and was laid to rest forever beneath his bed of flowers.
Two grandsons had he, who each inherited half of the verdant garden, to do with as each pleased.
One grandson stood before his half-garden, gazed upon the verdant profusion, and, a frown growing in his face, glanced beyond to the mowed grass lawns stretching to the horizon.
Looking down at his feet, he poked the toe of one polished black shoe at a knee-high plant with deeply hued, swollen blossoms -- and fell back startled, as the impatiens blossoms popped, exploding seeds all over his pants.
He angrily brushed off the seeds and stood, his fists clenching as he murmured at the garden, "Who did my grandfather dream he was, to grow such a thing here?"
The next day, the grandson returned -- with a bottle of herbicide in his hands.
With joyful malice he sprayed it on his half-garden -- with a final, extra helping of poison for the impatiens that had trumped his own impatience.
And so his garden withered -- its living rainbows become brittle, brown husks. The vacant earth that remained was later re-sodded with a mowed grass lawn.
Yet, so too did the other grandson come, to stand before his own half-garden.
He too gazed upon its verdant profusion. He squatted down and stared into the face of a snapdragon blossom, and lightly pinched its cheeks. It opened its toothy mouth and spoke to him, in a language too faint to hear.
Yet a calmness and purpose such as he had never known draped itself upon his shoulders.
He laid his open hand flat onto the green moss and black soil. "Grandfather," he said, "I see your dream."
And the next day, the grandson returned with a tin of water and fertilizer, to protect and nurture this garden, this dream. Thus, be not a reaver but a tiller of souls.
The Principled, The Implemented
Voting was their fix.
Whenever the neighbors attended rallies, the two women found they'd voted for the same candidates.
But one terrible day, the city was flooded with refugees from a distant country sundered by revolution.
The refugees spoke another language, lived a different culture, and practiced an alien religion -- and many of the locals refused them jobs, cursing them in the streets.
Both women agreed it was shameful, the poor reception the refugees had received.
Yet as one woman talked about it, the other acted.
The first woman proclaimed noble principles -- but was frightened by the refugees' unabated misery. She hid behind her locked front door when they came to her house begging for food, and stared at their backs through the blinds of her windows as they trudged away.
When locals called on her to serve at the schoolhouse, she profusely apologized, but claimed she was too busy to volunteer -- then sat on the couch in her empty home, staring into the fireplace.
The second woman lived her principles rather than merely proclaimed them.
She too was frightened by the misery she saw -- but when the refugees came to her home for food, she took a deep breath, opened the door, welcomed them into her home, and fed them what she could spare.
She walked one night every week to the schoolhouse, to teach the refugees how to read, write and speak her language.
Both women held the same principles, as glorious as a butterfly -- yet, in one, as lifeless as an insect abandoned in a jar. Thus, principles cannot live behind glass.
The Physicians, The Antiseptic
Once the health of the body was entrusted to experts of the "physick."
Black bags brimming with grimy, bloody instruments, these physicians and midwives hauled babies into the world with unclean hands -- leaving the mothers fever-ridden with sepsis, Death stroking their clammy faces.
Yet the physicians knew not of bacteria, and thought nothing of touching the mothers with unwashed hands and instruments.
Into this resigned fraternity came one doctor who insisted on strict cleanliness.
"Before the merest touch upon mother or child, you must wash your hands in hot water and lye soap! And touch not your own nose, or face, or clothes! Nor any surfaces!"
"Impossible!" the physicians cried. "How can we open doors to the wards or sickrooms? How can we pull back the sheets on the sickbeds? What if my nose or beard itches?!"
"Have a midwife scratch your beak," the physician replied, "but never shall they be permitted to touch the mother or her birth canal, without the same clean hands!"
"Absurd!" the physicians cried, and returned to their traditional ways.
But, over the months, they could not help but hear the gossip about how this young, fanatical doctor never once lost a patient to the clammy fever -- how both mother and child always remained healthy -- while their own patients oft succumbed mere days after childbirth.
Soon, every expectant mother in the land demanded the services of this one doctor -- and the other physicians were turned away from their doors.
Slowly, one after another, grumbling all the while, they all began to wash their hands. Thus, the world doesn't want your genius, but it needs it.
The Rapids, The Rower
Blindly they approached a roar like the voice of Legion, or the hoof-beats of a Diluvian stampede risen from a plain of fossils.
The explorers broke through the misty, orchid-draped green canopy and set down their portaged canoes by the shore of a torrential river.
Staring at the rushing water, hulking stones and sunken whirlpools, trepidation hammered their hearts.
Yet both skimmed out into the churn and chum.
One rower, overwhelmed by the tossing currents, froze -- his hands gripping the edges of his canoe.
It spun around and around, and as, at the last, he screamed in fright, it capsized and was dashed into pieces upon a boulder, then sucked into the depths of a whirlpool.
Two pieces of his canoe still were clutched in his hands, as he sank beneath the spiral of water.
The other rower, almost as overwhelmed, nevertheless resolved to keep rowing, no matter what.
As his canoe was tossed about on the rapids, he narrowly avoided certain destruction, time and again.
Eventually, his strength spent and his aim abandoned, he too was broken by the rapids and lost to the swirling currents.
Yet in his last moment of awareness, he felt no fear, but only the thought, "Oh, what a thrilling ride it was!" Thus, you are in the rapids, and you must row -- or capsize.
The Negated, The Affirmed Untouchable.
It was her caste, in this ancient land.
But she believed -- believed more than anything in her young life -- that she was the true equal of any who trod the soil of their land carrying the red spot of the highborn.
Slavishly working into the night, she saved money to enroll in private school, because she was forbidden to attend a public one.
On the first day she boarded a trolley for school, the trolley soon filled with highborn.
Frowning faces with red dots glared down at her where she sat, and voices called a gendarme.
She sat still and calm, looking into all their faces, and then saw, peeking out from behind a saffron sari, the small, red-dotted face of a little girl. She smiled at the little one.
Then a gendarme pushed up to her, and yelled, "Untouchable, leave the trolley to make way for the highborn, who cannot sit next to you!"
The untouchable woman then looked the little girl straight in the face, and, instead of silently bowing and backing off the trolley, as she'd done countless times before, she straightened her back and said, "No. It is my right to sit here, as it is theirs to sit beside me."
Shock and anger erupted.
As two gendarmes hauled her off the trolley by her legs and arms like a sack of grain, she caught the troubled glance of the little girl, saw her pluck at her mother's shawl, and heard, "Mama, it's wrong to hurt the nice lady!"
And, as she sat in the dirt and looked up to see the little girl stare sadly back at her through a window of the receding trolley, she knew, knew, that she'd won a victory that day. Thus, don't contradict who you are.-- via Parker Palmer
The Sunflower, The Barrenwort
The Sunflower dwelt in a small, tree-lined garden.
It grew tall, sinuous and broad of leaf in the fulsome light of warm days, and seeded many children.
But some fell into shade, and the Sunflower's face turned away as those children withered and died -- from lack of a soupçon of the sun's brilliant tang on their yearning leaves.
The Barrenwort dwelt in the same garden, beneath the dark crook of a tree.
It too grew broad, ruddy red and majestic, its crimson bloom bathed in the cool light of the moon, and it too seeded many children.
But some fell into light, and the Barrenwort held dark vigil as those children were stillborn -- from searing sunrays on their tender leaves. Thus, seek the soil in which you can grow.
The Lemming, The Eagle
Eaglets, their parents lost to a hunter's rifle, hatched in a nest at the top of a tall cliff.
They hatched into loneliness, their cries unheard -- save for the ears of a small lemming.
This mother lemming had co-opted and fur-lined the nest for her own brood - but, as all good mothers do, brought the eaglets half-chewed worms that boiled from the rain-soaked earth.
She and her growing brood cared for the chicks as if they were their own.
But they did not know how to teach their brother eaglets to fly, not knowing themselves. So the eaglets clumsily hopped along the top of the cliff behind their adopted lemming family.
Sometimes the eaglets sat and gazed at seabirds wheeling above them in the sky.
"See how feathery and long their arms are!" one would say, "just like ours!" -- and both brothers knew something was wrong, but not quite what.
Then one day a great, inland wind blew over the cliffs to the sea, and the lemmings hunkered down in a thicket. But the two eaglets, now nearly full-grown, were too large to hunker in the thicket with them.
The wind caught in their feathers, and blew them over the cliff.
One of the brother eaglets curled into a small, still ball, like a lemming, and plummeted into the sea.
But his brother eaglet cast his fears, and himself, into the face of the winds, and opened wide his arms. As his wings unfurled to their full, majestic span, they caught the currents of the sky.
And, become an eagle at last, he soared over land and sea, soon to master all. Thus, when pushed off a cliff, try to fly. -- via Babylon 5
The Falsifier, The Truthsayer
King for the all the seasons of a man's life, the ruler kept two advisors.
One advisor, panicking as drought, famine and invasion drew nigh, could only utter when standing before the king, "Milord, I see, uh... a time of rainfall, plenty and peace!"
The other advisor, seeing the same coming drought, famine and invasion, spoke truth to power, saying, "Milord! I, too, fervently wish for rainfall, plenty and peace -- but our wishing for it will not make it one whit likelier to happen."
"We must plan for drought, famine and war, my King -- for if we do not, we will all surely starve, or have our throats slit open for our last crumbs of bread!"
So did the king build a reservoir for the receding river waters.
So did he fill his granaries for both his own people and for their neighboring peoples.
And so, when drought did come, there was water and food for all until the rains came again -- and peace for all in his kingdom and beyond.
Except, of course, for one wandering ex-advisor. Thus, a lie is murder, by killing another's reality -- and suicide, by killing your own.
The Door, The World
Swooning in adoration of a beautiful girl from his village, a boy abandoned his father's house.
Loitering by the front door of the girl's villa, the boy bowed to her father at the entryway, and, seeing through it the girl smile radiantly at him from an atrium balcony, asked permission of her father to court her.
The girl's father scoffed, replying, "Boy, you have no family, no money, nor even yet hair on your face!"
Then the girl's father stepped out onto the front stoop of his villa, and, reaching back, slammed the entry door shut behind him.
The boy's last glimpse of the object of his infatuation was of wide eyes and a red mouth -- shaped, just like his, into a large, surprised "O."
Disconsolate, the boy hung his head, and pleaded to her father, "Now what do I have, sir, without her?"
The father laughed uproariously, and, reaching out to clap the small lad on the shoulder, turned him about-face, picked him up into the air, and tossed him into the street.
As the boy thumped to earth in a billowing cloud of dust, he heard a merry voice reply, "You've the rest of the world, lad!" Thus, when one door closes, the rest of the world remains. -- via Parker Palmer
The Blindered, The Open-Eyed
Bestriding golden wheat and gnarled olive trees sojourned a man and his pair of mares.
Both horses were spirited, and difficult to break to the chore of pulling his carts to the village market.
One mare, however, allowed him to strap blinders on her great, brown head. The vision only of the road ahead pacified the huge horse, and she would settle down and pull the man's cart all day long and into the night.
"With those blinders and a feedbag strapped to her neck, she's hardly any trouble at all anymore!" the man crowed to his neighbors.
But oh, the other horse! She tossed her yellow-starred head and golden mane to and fro, whenever the man came near her with the blinders.
She refused to wear them at all.
When yoked to the man's cart, she panned her head back and forth, and her great body immediately followed, veering off the rutted road to explore, disappearing over the hill to see what was beyond -- all the while dragging his bushels of wheat and jars of olives.
Finally one day, as the man loitered, foot in creek, with his friends, the mare reared high, snapped her harness, and bolted straight off -- to far-distant green mountain pastures and streams.
"Damn her hide," the man always intoned to his friends in his later years, staring angrily off to the distant mountains.
"If that mare had just kept her eyes glued to her own hooves, she'd still be hauling my goods even today." Thus, eyes open! -- via Star Trek: Voyager
The Hopping Roo, The Leaping Roo
In the eons of the island continent's dreamtime, before the arrival of Man, the Kangaroo rose from the earth to rule it.
More than any other, the Roo leapt high and far above the land, with its massive, stump-sized legs and feet.
Yet the dreamtime, in its unconscious wisdom, had fashioned not one, but two such Roos -- with equal ability, but different hearts.
The first Roo was called by the Parliament of Dingoes and Koalas to the edge of a great chasm carved into the earth by a river.
"You are to rule us, but to prove yourself, you must leap this chasm!" they challenged.
The Roo stared, quivering, at the far side of the plateau, then down at the rushing river, and then at her own two huge feet.
The feet stepped back.
"No!" she cried.
"Even for one such as I, it is much too great a leap. An impossible leap!"
And the Roo hopped away, trembling, into the Outback -- to dwell among the lizards and underbrush the rest of her barren days, jealous of a spirit she knew had never been hers.
The second Roo was summoned by the Parliament of Dingoes and Koalas.
"You are to rule us, but to prove yourself, you must leap this chasm!" they once again challenged.
This Roo glanced down, not at the depths, but at the cliff edge's hard, compact soil -- and then slowly raised her head to gaze at the other side, an impossible distance away.
Her feet stepped back.
"So be it!" she cried, then leaped forward, as far as her heart and feet could carry her, into the chasm.
In that instant she became their ruler. Thus, do not fear trying the impossible -- the alternative is to fear that others will.
The Immortal, The Mortal
Called by some Zeus, the "God of Thunder," his job was to hurl bolts of lightning at trees -- or at human heads grown tall with pride.
Zeus was an Immortal, a being who could neither age nor die. But over millennia of hurling bolts of lightning to the earth, only once -- for a few, fleeting hundreds of years -- when a clan of robed and sandaled humans chose to call him the Father of the Gods, did he take pleasure in it.
But after awhile, none any longer worshipped him, and every man -- and woman too -- began to stand so tall, it seemed, that he ran out of thunderbolts before even making a dent in their population.
Then finally, one day his former worshippers invented a metal pole that just sucked his bolts straight into the earth, harmlessly.
His hair stood on end.
In his rage, Zeus snatched up an old, frail woman from her backyard gardening, to finally confront a human with his complaints.
Depositing the old woman onto a terraced atrium garden atop Mount Olympus, he took human form and approached her.
"I am Zeus!" he cried in a thundering voice.
The old woman barely looked at him -- she was staring at his garden.
She turned to him and said, "Your garden is full of weeds!"
As the old woman bent over and began to pluck the overgrown ivy and mint from a porcelain-inlaid path in the garden, Zeus found himself sputtering, "Well, gods don't have time for gardening!"
"Because of all that time you spend abducting old crones?" the woman murmured, laughing, as she plucked.
"Stop your plucking! I deign to tell you that, after all these years of being ignored, I want people to fear and worship me again!"
The woman did stop plucking, dropped her pile of weeds, ivy and mint on the walkway, slowly straightened her crooked back with a groan, and looked straight up into Zeus's eyes.
"And why, exactly, do you deserve to be worshipped and feared?" she asked him.
His face turned as red as his beard.
"I can strike you dead!"
She thought for a moment, then replied, "We have lightning rods." Her glance turned impatient. "Try again."
Zeus mumbled, "Uh, I'm a God?"
The woman rolled her eyes.
"Why do you think you're worthy of worship just because you're a god?"
Zeus pondered. And pondered again. Then said nothing.
"You see," said the old woman, her glance softening slightly, "immortality does you no good, Zeus, if you have nothing to show for it."
The old woman patted him on the shoulder. "You want me to worship you?" She bent over, picked up the pile of weeds from his garden, and plopped them into his mighty hands. "Then here -- do something useful."
And so, under the all-too-brief but never forgotten tutelage of an old woman, did Zeus become Vertumnus, the God of Gardens. Thus, do not hope for some immortality -- hope for something mortally important to do.
The Faith Healer, The Town Doctor
A rolling vista had long separated the faith healer from the town doctor.
But then the traveling tent rolled over it.
The faith healer filled his tent with worshippers every Sunday. Like storm-water eddying around a drain, throngs surged to touch his white, sequined jacket, and to see others cast off crutches and throw away eye patches -- although, oddly, the locals weren't acquainted with these who cried, "I'm healed!"
The town doctor -- cotton jacket frayed but washed bone-white and carefully ironed -- was a gruff man and a poor talker. But he'd delivered most of the townsfolk into this world, and saved more lives than most men ever get around to.
One Sunday, a middle-aged woman from the next town, who'd tumbled down her mossy porch stairs and cracked her leg, hobbled on a makeshift crutch to the faith healer, and begged him to heal her.
The healer, after quickly double-checking a list he was palming, ignored her plea, moving on toward a man on crutches beside her. But the woman clutched the hem of his jacket, sobbing, "Please, healer, don't abandon me!"
The healer turned back to her, brushing her hand from his jacket. He placed his palm on the top of her head, closed his eyes, and, after a short pause, withdrew his hand and uttered in a stern voice, "Ye have little faith, woman! Come back when you have more!"
Demolished, the woman hobbled out of the tent into the street, and wept.
The doctor, out walking his rounds, saw her crutch and approached her. Ignoring her tears, he squatted down and took one measured glance of her purple and black shinbone.
He stood and turned toward the tent, and what had been grim in his face became baleful.
Then he looked at her sternly - just like, she remembered, her long-dead father, hoisting her underarm as she dawdled on their walk home from the river.
"Ma'am, that leg of yours is bent -- you need to have that break reset, and soon, or it'll heal wrong." And he led her to his office, sedated her, straightened her leg and set it in a cast.
In time she was healed. Thus, reality is not the only path -- but it is the only path forward.
The Fawn, The Otter
By the bayou lived a Fawn and an Otter.
The Fawn perked up her ears and froze at the smallest crack of a twig.
Her heart leapt about inside her like a mouse in a cage, and her legs trembled.
She hid in the lap of the cypress trees whenever the sun burst from behind a cloud.
So did the Fawn burn the candle of her life -- until a hunter's rifle puffed out her tremulous flame.
The Otter cavorted and dove in the black marsh.
Floating on her back, she cracked open pecans on a stone perched on her belly.
She barked and loped to sniff out the cracking of a twig or the crashing of a tree branch.
She rolled in the dirt whenever the sun burst from behind a cloud.
So did the Otter savor the story of her life -- until a gator's maw snapped closed her final chapter. Thus, be miserable and die, or be happy and die. Pick one!
These are humankind's most irrational blind spots in our new millennium -- the oversights in rational ethics that our grandchildren will someday look back upon with disbelief and shame. The Circle asks you to investigate, question, and then choose where you stand on whether we as a society should relegate these blatant failures of reason to history's dustbin:
Murder of Albinos for Body Parts
Execution of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgender Persons
Genocide
Gendercide (Selective Abortion & Postpartum Infanticide of Female Children)
Tribal War
Political Execution, Imprisonment & Oppression
Political or Theocratic Totalitarianism
Theocratic Execution, Imprisonment & Oppression
Execution of Adulterers
Virgin Rape as Disease Cure
Female Genital Mutilation
Child Slavery
Child Marriage
Bacha Bazi
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
Sexual Slavery
Theocratic Justification of Child-Beating
Prison Rape
Imprisonment of Sexually Trafficked and Child Prostitutes
Imprisonment of Adults for Consensual Sexual Commerce
Imprisonment of Adults for Consensual Drug Commerce
Drug Prohibition and Ensuing Black Market & Gang Warfare
Faith Healing, Witchdoctors & Alternative Medicine
Factually Incompatible Theocratic Dogma
Theocratically Enforced Celibacy, Childlessness, Poverty, Self Injury & Tithing
Health Care Insurance Denial
Healthcare-Associated Infections from Providers' Septic Habits
Women's Education, Voting & Work Bans
Occupied Territory Voting Bans
Gay Equal Rights & Marriage Bans
Global Warming Denial
Consumer Habitat, Ecosystem & Endangered Species Destruction
Harvesting Old Growth and Virgin Forests to Make Soft Toilet Paper
Consumer Pollution
Corporate Pollution
Government Pollution
Military Bombing Test Range Pollution
Short-Term Profit Incentives for Business Executives
Government & Government-Sanctioned Private Arms Sales to Dictatorships
Endangered Species Killing for Body Parts
Legal Government Bribery
Government Allowance of Insider Trading by Legislators
Anonymous Corporate Political Ads
Government-Controlled News & Propaganda
Propaganda Disguised as News or Facts
Free Press Equal Treatment of Propaganda and Facts
School Creationism & Intelligent Design
Astrology, Soothsaying & Spiritualism for Profit
Social Acceptance of Emotive Appeals Contradicted by Data
Social Acceptance of Ad Hominem Attacks
Hall of Fame
These are humankind's most rational forward steps in our new millennium -- the advances in rational ethics that our grandchildren will someday look back upon with relief and gratitude. The Circle asks you to investigate, question, and then choose where you stand on whether we as a society should more widely disseminate these achievements of reason:
Women's Equal Rights
Gay Marriage & Equal Rights
Drug Use Decriminalization
Universal Health Care
Tobacco Warning Labels
Mosquito Net Donations to Third World
Healthcare Provider Septic Habits Ban
Micro-Loans for Third World Entrepreneurship
Child Labor Ban
Third World Internet Access
Social-Media News
Political Recognition of Global Warming
Green Cars
Alternative Energy Development
Habitat Conservation
Recycled Paper, Metal & Plastic Products
Endangered Species Protection
Animal Welfare
Interfaith Dialogue Movement
Pluralistic Rationalist Movement
Links
We are pleased to present these links of interest to those
wanting to learn more about or volunteer to encourage reason,
charity and truly inclusive fellowship in society:
With regret, we have removed the below charitable links
due to their recent discriminatory practices in hiring or
service. With your help (by petition or withholding donations)
we hope to one day welcome these organizations back:
Catholic Charities (retracted policy allowing adoption by
same-sex couples) The Salvation Army (instituted policy denying employment
to gays or lesbians) The Boy Scouts of America (instituted policy denying membership
to non-theists and gays)
The Circle of Reason receives no financial incentive from any organization listed among its Links.
Make It So
Coming together is a beginning. Staying together is progress. Working together is success. -- Circle of Reason Cardiff
Like our Parables or Tenets? Tell others about us, or link your blog or website to ours!
Want to Join The Circle of Reason and help save the world? Simply E-mail us your name and your city, state and country of residence, to join The Circle's international member roster. Membership is free!
Seeking a shared haven of true ecumenism for a saner world? Visit one of our Local Circles or Online Communities (Virtual Local Circles) -- public forums for cross-cultural and cross-belief dialogue -- and chime in!
Want increased clarity about your life? Join our Clarity Circles.
The Circle also encourages you to check out our Links -- unaffiliated dot-orgs we think are helping bring about more rational stewardship of our society and our planet.
The Circle is also organizing its own unique programs -- E-mail us to join:
1. StrikeForce -- Most bad events in the world are the consequences of our own actions magnified by 6.6 billion others acting in the same way. To remind us we all need to go "on strike" to avoid doing the things that, when done en masse, harm society and our planet, we are sponsoring the Circle StrikeForces, including DrugStrike, BingeStrike and its "242" (Two Drinks for Two Decades) celebration, BullyStrike, CliqueStrike, SlurStrike, CheatStrike, TrashStrike and PetrolStrike.
2. Reason-Monitors -- Much of what passes for public discourse is filled with denials of reality, questionable assumptions (false realities), and emotive arguments dissociated from reality. Reason-Monitors will flag such errors, to help keep the ship of state on an even keel. As part of this effort, The Circle will be publishing an online periodical, The Reason Monitor, wherein volunteer editors will highlight illogical reasoning and the use of invective or counterfactual emotive arguments in public commentary.
3. Bad hominem Campaign -- We ask the public to question its long-cherished assumption that emotive, ad hominem attacks are moral; The Circle of Reason asserts that, because such argumentation seeks to persuade only by evoking emotionality, it is indeed not moral and should be frowned upon in civil society. So the next time you see an insult masked as an argument, stand up and speak its true name -- immorality.
4. The Dialogium -- Most people ignore soapbox speakers. It takes a patient, reasoning, and where possible even facilitative, strategic approach to open and then widen avenues of reasoned discourse between those of very disparate beliefs. The Dialogium is The Circle's unique forum for facilitative, reasoning transbelief dialogue, encouraging more reasoning, open-minded leadership of the disparate groups represented among our membership and within the broader community.
Finally, give us Feedback. We believe in the mind -- so tell us what's on yours!
Local Circles
In the soil of every belief can be inscribed a common circle -- wherein stand the reasoning.
As an international organization for pluralistic rationalism, The Circle of Reason sponsors or endorses local circles of reasoning dialogue and fellowship between those with disparate beliefs and backgrounds.
Local Circles of Reason are literally neighborhood congregations whose very assembly across the gulf of human difference evinces a communal belief in the power of logical and reasoning thought to transform our world and help humankind attain its next major step toward moral and philosophical maturity.
To find or begin a Local Circle of Reason, E-mail us your name and your city, state and country of residence.
There is no tithing, nor membership fee, to be a Member of The Circle of Reason, Inc. and of a Local Circle -- rich or poor, you are welcome here.
If you're the first of your community to join The Circle of Reason, ask our assistance in organizing a Local Circle as a Meetup group in your city -- we'll cover the Organizer's fee!
The Circle of Reason, as a sponsor of cross-belief dialogue and fellowship, does not seek to convert its members from their faiths, but encourages its members to reasoningly guide their faiths. Local Circles are thus encouraged to be founded in and sponsored by (and between) neighborhood churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and atheist groups, while welcoming members of every (or no) belief and creed, so that in reasoning dialogue and fellowship all may learn how to believe (or disbelieve) without dogmatic aggression.
Local Circle meetings are held at times not conflicting with Friday Prayers or Saturday or Sunday Sabbath ceremonies.
For organizational tips on starting a Local Circle, and info on various Circle activities ranging from conversational or charitable fellowship to ecumenical marriage (or civil union or commitment), amicable divorce (eudivortium) and eulogy (eulogium) ceremonies, play our Circle of Reason Slideshow.
And, if you're not sure about joining the pluralistic rationalists of The Circle of Reason, ask yourself, "What Would Surak Do?"
Your e-mail address and member info shall remain private and will not be released to anyone, including other Circle members, without your explicit request.
Online Communities
Gather in, speak out, listen up, get down.
Want to seek out new logical life, and new rational civilizations? To clearly go where no one has gone before?
Want to find, recruit, converse with and encourage -- from all walks of life, all biologies, all beliefs, all societies -- those who are your own kinsmen and kinswomen - the reasoning kind?
Want to discuss the role of reason, or its absence, in our "modern" society?
Want to help humankind at long last attain philosophical and moral maturity?
You're looking for one of The Circle of Reason's Online Communities -- or "Virtual Local Circles":
1. Beliefnet Circle of Reason -- Here are kindred souls with many different (or no) beliefs! Join the 182-member-strong B'net Circle of Reason's all-inclusive forum for debating religious, interfaith and secular issues of the day. (BCOR founded April 2008)
2. Facebook Circle of Reason -- Currently our second-largest Virtual Local Circle with 159 members, Facebook members join this Online Community to find reasoning friends from all corners of the planet. (FCOR founded February 2008)
3. The Round Table -- Pull up a chair to The Round Table, COR's own ad-free webforum. (CORRT awaits additional seed members in Winter 2011 - login and post about why YOU decided to join The Circle!)
Join BCOR, FCOR or CORRT today...and own our future.
BCOR, FCOR and CORRT webforums guarantee users' privacy by permitting username avatars and by not disclosing users' login e-mail addresses.
Clarity Circles
Reason, like the sun, burns away the fog that lies ahead.
Want increased clarity about a big decision in your life?
Willing to help another through an important life choice by simply -- and only -- asking questions to help them perceive the realities, assumptions, and emotions that underlie their dilemma?
You're looking for the tradition of communal clear thinking historically begun by the Quakers, and which we continue today -- Clarity Circles:
To begin or join a real-worldClarity Circle, E-mail us your name, city, state and country of residence.
To begin or join an onlineClarity Circle as a public, permanently viewable discussion board thread, visit one of our Online Communities.
To begin or join a Clarity Circle as a live group webchat, post the day, time & time zone for your Clarity Circle event at one of our Online Communities, then at the appointed time go to the #claritycircle channel of IRCnet.org's Webchat (accessed by typing claritycircle under the IRCnet chatchannel menu option "Other").
