What do you really want?

River Creatures

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river.

The current of the river swept silently over them all… young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the rocks and twigs of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.

But one creature said at last, “I am tired of clinging. Though I can’t see it with my own eyes, I trust that the current knows where it’s going. I shall let go and let it take me where it will. If I keep clinging, I will surely die of boredom.

The other creatures laughed and said, “You fool, you let go and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!”

But the one heeded them not, and…. taking a breath…. did let go and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried “Look… a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us!”

And the one carried in the current said, “I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if we only dare let go. Our true path is this voyage… this adventure”

But they cried the more “Savior!” all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone and they were left alone making legends of a Savior.