A
long, long, long, long time ago-a time very, very, very distanced from this
time.
In a place far, far, far, far away-very far, far, far, far away from this place.
There
existed two churches.
Both churches were experiencing financially
difficulties. Both churches were facing decline in participation. Both churches believed they needed change.
And so both
communities resolved to find the change that would save their churches.
The first
community was rich in resources and, although they had little hope, they dutifully created
a plan deciding that in order to make the best use of their resources they would send each individual member out in different directions to search for this change. So each member packed up their Nalgene water bottle, their cliff bar, and
their compass and said goodbye to the Other.
The second church, being small in size, simple in
mind, and limited in resources regretfully resigned themselves to the fact that they would have to
stay in the place they were. Together they wept for the journey they could not
take and the place to which they would never go. Seeing their anguish, and feeling quite capable, the first church promised the second church that whenever a member of their community found the change in the place that they were to become that they would send back to those who wept and waited a letter of invitation along with some money to pay for the journey.
Days and months and years
passed and one by one the members of the first community ceased to wander. Each time one would arrive at the place they had been searching for they fulfilled their promise of sending back letters. Although many had reached places of beauty and spiritual
richness, their letters received no response and there invitations no arrivals. Soon it seemed that, receiving no responses or arrivals, all the members of the first community had dispersed to live a new promise with a new
people in a new place.
Except one man, stubborn in nature, who naturally inclined, resisted residency in each place he passed by and continued to wander. In spite of his commitment to preserve, hoping to find the best change in the most promised place, his legs began to grow weary and his mouth began to feel dry. Under a tree, on a rock, in a garden, he sat.
And sat.
And sat.
As time
passed he began to see people passing by that he had never noticed. He reached up and tasted fruit that he had never eaten. He drank from the stream of cool water that he had never dared to.
Here he sat and noticed and ate and drank and although it wasn't the place of which he had been searching he could convince himself to go no farther and so each day he would write a letter for those who wept to come and join him that they might eat and drink and notice with him.
And each day he heard no reply and a great loneliness came over him. Reluctantly he began to join the people in his midst; The people under the tree, the people in the stream, and the people tending the garden.
Over time their kindness tempted him to forget that place from which he had come and those
people to whom he had once belonged and the promise to the people who wept. Noticing the sadness sitting behind his eyes, the people in the garden and the people in the stream had compassion for him and gathered together under the tree, next to the stream, where the man sat writing.
"Come with us," and they took his hands and walked him away from the stream and the tree, the fruit and the water, to a door of a building that, opening before him, poured out all the letters from all the days and all the weeks and all the years. The man, seeing the letters, fell on his knees and wept until the words of his heart bled and the papers of his work absorbed into the earth where the trees with the fruit and the streams of fresh water now flourished.
When his tears had dried and the morning had come, it was the gentle words of the people who had wept and the soft hands of the people who had wandered who sang the song that led him home, to the fruit of change and the water of salvation, in the place he belonged.
