Page 9 - Quaker News & Views Nov 25 - Jan 26

across the desert and drop you gently into the ocean. The river is afraid, but summons up the courage to
surrender to the breath of the wind and is carried safely to its destination, the sea. Breath is a synonym for
spirit. The story includes earth, fire, water and air, the four elements, and indicates the transcendence to
ether, the divine source of them all.

Closer to home, we have the extraordinary story of Alice In Wonderland. Alice falls asleep, and literally falls
into what seems like a different reality. There is a little door which she wants to pass through, but she is too
big. When she drinks a magic potion, she becomes small, but now she is too short to reach the door key on
the glass table. She experiments until she is the right size. Irrational beings are waiting for her in this
imaginary place, and she is even threatened with a trial, but then she realises that what she is seeing is not
real. Why you are nothing but a pack of cards! she exclaims, and wakes up. Waking up is the goal.

It reminds us of Plato’s metaphor of sitting in a cave with one’s back to the real world and seeing only shadows
of the outside on the wall.

Some stories are humorous. A farmer had 3 lazy sons and when he died, he left them a farm and a letter
saying that he had buried some treasure in the fields. The young men reluctantly went out to dig the fields
but found no treasure. However, as they had turned the soil, they thought that they might as well plant some
seeds. At harvest time they had an excellent crop. After celebrating, they searched again the next year for
their father’s treasure, and dug the ground once more, but found nothing. As before, they felt that they might
as well plant a crop. This one too was abundant. By now, they were used to the labour of digging, and
continued in future years. Eventually they realised the nature of the treasure their father had left for them.

Fables too offer simple moral tales and are usually as easy to understand today as they were in Aesop’s time.
We can see faults such as pride evoking ridicule and causing failures in life.

One of my own favourite stories is of a prophet who was out walking in the countryside and heard a shepherd
boy praying. He was wishing that God could be like one of his own little lambs so that he could express his
love by sheltering, cuddling and protecting Him. The prophet stopped and rebuked the child for disrespecting
the Creator, and then he walked on. But as he did, he in turn was rebuked by the Inner Voice for criticising
the boy, who was just trying to show his devotion in the best and most natural way he could.

From India there is a rather similar story.

A young woman was walking through a village to visit her beloved. To do so, she crossed a square where a
‘holy man’ was praying, and she passed nearer to the guru than was usually felt to be respectful. Later, when
she was walking back through the same square, the holy man called her over and criticised her for failing to
keep a respectful distance earlier. The girl apologised but said: I was so full of love for my beloved that I was
not aware of my surroundings, and if you were so full of love for God, how did you come to notice me?

Let’s conclude by coming back to the image of the circle, but this time in the form of a wheel. And that is
supposedly the basis of all our technological development.

As we know, a bicycle wheel consists of an outer rim with a number of evenly spaced spokes which converge
onto the central hub. This can be seen as a metaphor for different faith groups and even individuals within
the same group.

At points on the rim the spokes are relatively far apart but from another perspective they lead out from and
return to the central unity. This may be called a representation of the divine oneness. We need the rim, we
need the spokes and it is all focused on and held together by the hub.

Courtesy of Rosemary Brown, Bournemouth

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