Page 167 - The Book of Rumi

The Crow and the Grave

ain had mercilessly killed his brother Abel and was carrying the corpse
Con his shoulders, unable to decide how and where to hide the body so
he wouldn’t be caught out by his parents, Adam and Eve. Never before had he
been faced with such a daunting task, and now he felt lost. Looking around
him as he bore the weight of the corpse, he tried to come up with a solution,
but his mind was too limited to be of much use.
It was late, and the sky was turning dark; Cain felt that his chance to

resolve the situation was rapidly disappearing, when he spotted a crow fly-
ing low toward him. At fi rst, he thought it was a hallucination, but then as
the crow flew closer, Cain could clearly see that he was carrying what seemed

like a dead crow in his beak. Gracefully, the bird circled in the air, and just as
gracefully he landed nearby. Slowly and gently, he let the dead crow roll out
of his beak onto the ground, and he proceeded to dig into the earth with his
powerful claws. Once the hole was deep enough, the crow used his beak to
push the corpse in and began to cover the dead bird with the soil he had dug
up only a few moments earlier.
Cain watched the crow in utter amazement, wondering how it was pos-
sible that a simple, common bird could be so much smarter than he was!
Immediately he followed the bird’s example and buried his slain brother in the
ground, leaving no trace behind for his parents to ever stumble upon.
Unbeknown to Cain, people need guidance in almost all tasks they face
on earth, and the simple crow had been assigned to teach this lowest of acts:
grave digging.

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