A NOW YOU KNOW MEDI A STUDY GUIDE
Fables and Faith: Understanding the Gospel with Aesop’s Fables
Presented by Rev. Gregory I. Carlson, S.J., D.Phil.
FABLES AND FAITH: UNDERSTANDING THE GOSPEL WITH AESOP’S FABLES STUDY GUIDE
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Table of Contents
Program Summary ...... 4
About Your Presenter ...... 5
Conference 1: Christian Life Invites Gratitude ...... 6
Conference 2: Who Is This God? ...... 16
Conference 3: The Human Train Wreck: What Happens When We Do Not Let Ourselves Be Loved by God as We Are ...... 28
Conference 4: The School of Hard Knocks: Discernment and Decision ...... 38
Conference 5: Let’s Be Honest: See and Come ...... 51
Conference 6: Please Tell Me Who I Am ...... 63
Conference 7: I’m Nobody! Are You Nobody Too? ...... 74
Conference 8: Me First, It’s All About Me...... 86
Conference 9: Whose Ox Is Getting Gored? ...... 96
Conference 10: Make Me a Channel of Your Peace ...... 105
Conference 11: He Ran Then, and He Is Still Running Now: Freedom from and Freedom For ...... 113
Conference 12: What Western Fables Do Not Stress ...... 125
Bibliography ...... 135
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Program Summary
Fables delight us and teach us the most important lessons about our lives. As this retreat shows, they also illuminate the message of the Gospel.
You will join one of the leading experts on fables on a 12-part retreat that uses the fables of Aesop, Fontaine, and others to help you deepen and enjoy your Christian spiritual life. Underneath their seemingly simple narratives, fables demonstrate the most universal themes of existence.
Your presenter is Rev. Gregory Carlson, S.J., a Jesuit priest, professor, and the founder of the Fable Collection at Creighton University, possibly the largest collection of fable materials in the world. His delightful renditions of such timeless Aesop stories as “The Tortoise and the Hare” and “The Fox and the Grapes” will draw you in and delight you. As you listen to and interpret these fables, you will come to a deeper spirituality of gratitude and fuller image of God.
Steeped in the tradition of Ignatian spirituality, Rev. Carlson invites you to discernment in your daily life. You will also explore the dynamics of the Ignatian Two Standards. In them, you will encounter a healthy Christian identity and freedom from the common traps of egocentrism.
As you explore the fables, you will discover novel and engaging methods of understanding humility. You will look at the ways in which the Christian life is magnified by Aesop’s fables, but you will also see how the Gospel expounds on virtues that are sometimes absent in fables. By looking at both fables and the Gospels, you will enjoy a truly unique and moving retreat.
We especially recommend the video version of this course, as Fr. Carlson integrates many images of Aesop’s fables. We have also included these images in the free study guide, which accompanies this program.
If you are looking to deepen your spiritual life while enjoying delightful stories, you will love this engaging retreat.
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About Your Presenter
A priest of the Society of Jesus, Rev. Carlson is one of the leading Ignatian retreat leaders in the United States. He received his Master of Divinity from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley and his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg. Rev. Carlson is Associate Professor of English and Associate Director of the Deglman Center for Spirituality at Creighton University. Previously, he taught classics at the College of the Holy Cross, Marquette University, the Jesuit School of Theology, and Georgetown University. He was the President of the Vergilian Society from 1999–2001 and was awarded Georgetown University President’s Medal in 1991. As one of the world’s leading experts on fables, Rev. Carlson has published extensively on the subject, and he maintains the Carlson Fable Collection at Creighton, which hosts over 6,000 books and 4,000 artifacts. He is the author of numerous articles, including “Spiritual Direction and the Paschal Mystery” (Review for Religious) and “Shepherd and Host: A Literary Look at Psalm 23” (The Bible Today).
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Conference 1: Christian Life Invites Gratitude
I. Who is invited to enjoy these conferences? A) Christians who want to pay attention to and to develop their spirituality. B) Spirituality = how we live among the tensions caused by our beliefs 1) We may have had an idea that spirituality stops tensions. But that is incorrect; it starts plenty of them! C) This retreat is meant for Christian believers, but others can find valuable things here, too. 1) Anyone interested in spirituality can profit. You will know how to adapt to your faith. 2) Every belief, including Christian belief, is a boat floating on a sea of doubt and question. 3) Many of us, within Christianity and outside of it, are like St. Thomas, finding God within our doubts and questions and not by suppressing them. D) People who have encountered Ignatian spirituality in one way or another will recognize familiar turns here, and those who find this approach congenial may want to go further, especially by making or remaking the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.
II. Five Invitations A) Life invites us to relate to God now. 1) Let God meet you where you are now. (a) We need to relate to the central mystery of our life! 2) Spirituality grows up in people who take time to relate to the mystery at the heart of life. 3) Relating to God—to the mystery at the heart of life—is the most important and central thing. 4) Jesus’ question: “What does it profit a man . . . ?” 5) The Principle and Foundation of St. Ignatius: We are made by God for God. 6) Gerard Manley Hopkins compared each of us to a mote of dust. (a) Thee God I come from, to thee go All day long I like fountain flow From thy hand out, swayed about, Motelike in thy mighty glow. (b) The biggest danger for spirituality is to postpone this address. (i) “I’ll do it when I have my life better together.”
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(ii) “Let me put God on hold until . . .” 7) The God Jesus presents as His Father is ready to meet people where they are and accompany them there, just as Jesus does. 8) Attending to spirituality always involves a conversion like Dante’s at the beginning of the Divine Comedy: we find ourselves lost and alone in the midst of a dark wood, and we come to ourselves. (a) The way to come to ourselves is to turn to the God who made and makes us, who loves us as we are right now. (b) Don't wait! “Now is the time of salvation.” B) Life invites us to pay attention to what is in front of us. 1) It’s not always easy to notice and to pay attention to what's there in front of us. 2) Growing often includes noticing some things maybe for the first time. 3) Krylov’s Sightseer (elephant in the museum) 4) The Travellers and the Plane-Tree (Perry 175) 5) Oedipus Rex: The evidence is right before us, but we sometimes don't know how to read it. 6) Features become furniture, especially if we have lived with them for a long time. C) Life invites us to notice and to do what we can do. 1) We will notice key areas in our life where we need to hear “it’s not about you!” 2) But some things in life, though they are not necessarily about you, are up to you. (a) You find what you are ready to find. A lot of life is how you look at it and whether you’re willing to do something. (b) Aesop: The Oracle and the Rogue. It depends on you whether it’s alive or dead (Perry 36). 3) In Ignatian spirituality, desire precedes the gift. (a) You will see what you seek. (b) That is why it is worth asking for what you want or need. 4) If you are watching and listening to these tapes because you want to grow, it is worth asking God to help you grow. (a) Experienced directors would probably say that that is a sign that the gift is on its way, though the form in which it will appear may surprise both us and our directors.
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(b) Jesus in His baptism: God expresses loving intimacy.. (c) To encounter God is always somehow to bump into the question: To what am I invited now? D) Life invites us to grow silent and to listen. 1) Is there an element of silence in your life where you can reflect? (a) Noise and talk are everywhere. (b) Our culture has a horror of the void. It tells us to fill up the void with things, with music, and other filler. 2) The silence is especially for listening 3) I have experienced four stages of praying: (i) Talking at God (ii) Talking to God (iii)Listening to God (iv) Listening for God 4) These talks are meant to help you listen and understand what is going on when you try to listen not only to but also for. E) Christian life invites us to gratitude. 1) There is a receptive moment that comes absolutely first in Christian spirituality. Its attitude is gratitude. 2) Start other places and you will often end up in trouble: (a) Duty (b) Entitlement (c) Self-improvement (d) Gaining heaven (e) Security (f) Looking better (g) I’m not where I am supposed to be (h) I am in a place where I cannot find God and God cannot find me
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3) Gratitude anchors us in the relationship we have at the center of our lives, it gives us perspective on our issues, and it tells us more than anything else who we are. 4) So the great Christian prayer is the Eucharist: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God!
III. One recommended practice: the Examen A) I recommend as a first step in a renewed spiritual life a particular practice: time being grateful to the God who made us and loves us for who we are. 1) Let God be there with the gifts God has given us. 2) Gratitude helps us to learn to love the me that God loves. B) Our gratitude is for many things, including being who we are. C) Rummage through the day noticing what we know are gifts (not what we should see as gifts). 1) Take a few moments to invite God into the dark corners and jagged edges of the day. 2) Take another moment to watch a particular area of your lives or to check the mood you’ve been in and how it has arisen. D) We go wrong on: 1) Judging ourselves inadequate 2) Despising the gift that we are 3) Worrying about others’ views of us 4) Endlessly improving ourselves E) One focus for that practice: overlooked gratitude to watch for—friendship
IV. Scripture A) Luke 5: The Calling of Simon 1) Simon’s whole future life and work will be built on this gratitude, which will grow. 2) Gratitude and generosity beget each other. 3) Simon can go into the future because of gratitude. B) Lamentations 3:22-25 The favors of the lord are not all in the past. The LORD’s acts of mercy are not exhausted, his compassion is not spent; They are renewed each morning—
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great is your faithfulness! The LORD is my portion, I tell myself, therefore I will hope in him. The LORD is good to those who trust in him, to the one that seeks him. C) Giving thanks celebrates and deepens the gift
V. Jesus and Gratitude A) Woman who loves much: she is grateful for being forgiven much (Luke 7:47) B) Ten lepers, particularly the one who returns (Luke 17:11) C) Servant who turned on his fellow servant (Mt 18:21) D) Aesop: The Astronomer and the Well E) Can we attend to, notice, and be grateful for what is before us in our lives?
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FABLES, PARABLES, AND PICTURES
The House of 1000 Mirrors (Author Unknown, Japanese folktale, web: http://www.inspirationalstories.com/3/311.html)
Long ago in a small, far away village, there was place known as the House of 1000 Mirrors. A small, happy little dog learned of this place and decided to visit. When he arrived, he bounced happily up the stairs to the doorway of the house. He looked through the doorway with his ears lifted high and his tail wagging as fast as it could. To his great surprise, he found himself staring at 1000 other happy little dogs with their tails wagging just as fast as his. He smiled a great smile, and was answered with 1000 great smiles just as warm and friendly. As he left the House, he thought to himself, “This is a wonderful place. I will come back and visit it often.”
In this same village, another little dog, who was not quite as happy as the first one, decided to visit the house. He slowly climbed the stairs and hung his head low as he looked into the door. When he saw the 1000 unfriendly looking dogs staring back at him, he growled at them and was horrified to see 1000 little dogs growling back at him. As he left, he thought to himself, “That is a horrible place, and I will never go back there again.”
The Sightseer (Krylov)
‘AH! glad to see you, Brown! Well, tell me where you've been?’
‘The new Museum, White, To spend an hour or two; I've gone right through and through: It's simply a delight! My tongue, my memory would fail me quite To tell you all the things I’ve seen. Yes, there are wonders by the room-full, there. What wealth of quaint designs has nature got to spare Such beasts! Such birds! You never saw the sight: Those butterflies! Those insects small! Fly, beetle, centipede, and all! And some like emeralds, and some like corals bright! And then, the tiny lady-bird! Why, scarce a pin's-head! You will hardly take my word.’
‘You saw the elephant? A sight you won’t forget! I guess you thought a mountain you had met. So huge he is, and large of limb.’
‘What! Is he there?’ ‘Of course!’
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‘Well – no, to my regret! The elephant? I never noticed him.’
Source: Krylov’s Fable, translated into English Verse with a preface by Bernard Pares, Professor of Russian in the University of London. Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, Inc.
The Travellers and the Plane-Tree Two Travellers were walking along a bare and dusty road in the heat of a summer’s day. Coming presently to a Plane-tree, they joyfully turned aside to shelter from the burning rays of the sun in the deep shade of its spreading branches. As they rested, looking up into the tree, one of them remarked to his companion, “What a useless tree the Plane is! It bears no fruit and is of no service to man at all.” The Plane-tree interrupted him with indignation. “You ungrateful creature!” it cried: “you come and take shelter under me from the scorching sun, and then, in the very act of enjoying the cool shade of my foliage, you abuse me and call me good for nothing!”
(Many a service is met with ingratitude.)
Source: Aesop’s Fables, translated by Vernon Jones (1912) Illustration by Arthur Rackham.
273. The Rogue and the Oracle
A Rogue laid a wager that he would prove the Oracle at Delphi to be untrustworthy by procuring from it a false reply to an inquiry by himself. So he went to the temple on the appointed day with a small bird in his hand, which he concealed under the folds of his cloak, and asked whether what he held in his hand were alive or dead. If the Oracle said “dead,” he meant to produce the bird alive: if the reply was “alive,” he intended to wring its neck and show it to be dead. But the Oracle was one too many for him, for the answer he got was this: “Stranger, whether the thing that you hold in your hand be alive or dead is a matter that depends entirely on your own will.” Illustration by Thomas Bewick.
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Damon and Pythias (Magnus Gottfried Lichtwer, translated from Johann Friedrich Konrad, Seid Klug wie die Schlangen, p. 61)
The Greek young man Damon once asked the Delphic oracle: “Who has the greatest treasure on earth? Where can it be found?”
The god’s answer was: “You have possessed it for a long time. You will find it before your door.”
He hurries home and finds his friend Pythias standing there. “My dear friend,” he says, “the greatest treasure is here. Come in a hurry. Half of it belongs to you!”
They dig everywhere deep into the night. No treasure appears.
Finally Damon throws down his shovel and exclaims, “What an idiot am I!” He embraces Pythias and says, “You are the greatest treasure. Could I want more?” The Call of Simon the Fisherman (NAB Luke, chapter 5) While the crowd was pressing in on Jesus and listening to the word of God, he was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret. He saw two boats there alongside the lake; the fishermen had disembarked and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. After he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” Simon said in reply, “Master, we have worked hard all night and have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets.” When they had done this, they caught a great number of fish and their nets were tearing. They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come to help them. They came and filled both boats so that they were in danger of sinking. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” For astonishment at the catch of fish they had made seized him and all those with him, and likewise James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners of Simon. Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men. “When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him.
89. The Astrologer Aesop for Children A man who lived a long time ago believed that he could read the future in the stars. He called himself an Astrologer, and spent his time at night gazing at the sky. One evening he was walking along the open road outside the village. His eyes were fixed on the stars. He thought he saw there that the end of the world was at hand, when all at once, down he went into a hole full of mud and water. There he stood up to his ears, in the muddy water, and madly clawing at the slippery sides of the hole in his effort to climb out. His cries for help soon brought the villagers running. As they
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pulled him out of the mud, one of them said: “You pretend to read the future in the stars, and yet you fail to see what is at your feet! This may teach you to pay more attention to what is right in front of you, and let the future take care of itself.” “What use is it," said another, “to read the stars, when you can’t see what’s right here on the earth?” Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.
The Farmer and His Sons Aesop for Children (1919)
A rich old farmer, who felt that he had not many more days to live, called his sons to his bedside. “My sons,” he said, “heed what I have to say to you. Do not on any account part with the estate that has belonged to our family for so many generations. Somewhere on it is hidden a rich treasure. I do not know the exact spot, but it is there, and you will surely find it. Spare no energy and leave no spot unturned in your search.” The father died, and no sooner was he in his grave than the sons set to work digging with all their might, turning up every foot of ground with their spades, and going over the whole farm two or three times. No hidden gold did they find; but at harvest time when they had settled their accounts and had pocketed a rich profit far greater than that of any of their neighbors, they understood that the treasure their father had told them about was the wealth of a bountiful crop, and that in their industry had they found the treasure. (Industry is itself a treasure.)
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Where have you experienced tensions in your spirituality?
2. How do you deal with questions and doubts about your faith?
3. Is there some way in which you are postponing your encounter with God? If so, is there something that you can do about that?
4. Is there an element of silence in your life where you can reflect?
5. Do you have friends that you can acknowledge as loving gifts of God?
6. Are there some ways in which you can find your Christian vocation expressed in the call of Simon Peter (Luke 5:1-11)?
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Conference 2: Who Is This God?
I. The Man and the Wooden God (Jacobs 41)
II. What is your sense of God these days? A) “Spiritual direction” 1) Misnomer 2) Accountability to God and myself 3) I go to hear what I will say. 4) It is good to have someone who cares in whose presence I can declare my life. 5) I might well be able to do just the things I asked for last time: (a) Relate to God in the midst of my life as it is right now (b) Notice what is there and be honest about it (c) Recognize where it is up to me (d) Grow quiet and listen (e) Get to some of the praying that I want to get to 6) And do what I will talk about this time: Confront a poor image of God. B) Confront the view that God doesn’t care. 1) The Enlightenment has bequeathed us a God who got things going but is distant from the world God created. 2) This God is not Christian. C) The Ox and Gnat: our instinctive feeling about God and us (Perry 137; Rackham illustration) D) Often our own Christian tradition has given us—if not in dogma, then in lived experience —a God who is first of all judge and who keeps score, and is therefore angry and even vengeful. E) This view of God has a natural correlation in our view of us: 1) We’re not good enough, at least not yet. 2) We need to be afraid. 3) We need to be someone else to relate to God.
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III. Let Jesus tell you who God is A) A healthy Christian view of God takes its cue from Jesus, whose most frequent command was “do not be afraid.” B) Maybe the first thing to say about God grows out of our human experience of relationship: 1) All relationships begin—and endure—and succeed—to the degree that they are embedded in MYSTERY. 2) The THOU that I encounter is more than I can fathom, here as in every good relationship. 3) Complete knowledge of another person is an illusion. 4) A sense that I know someone beyond mystery is a shackling of my encounter with that person. 5) There is always more to get to know. C) Christian spirituality invites us into the adventure of getting to know God better and better, and of finding more and more mystery. D) This God is always inviting us to intimacy and always inviting us to take a next step in growing and serving. E) Look at Jesus’ experience in his baptism: intimacy and invitation to the next step. F) Jupiter and the Monkey: Laughed at? Loved? 1) God is not afraid of being laughed at, of loving each of us particularly, personally, and unreasonably.
IV. Bad news when we do not start from Jesus’ sense of God A) Without continuing to start from the mysterious God who cares for us, we are like the stag: 1) Stag and Reflection (illustration by Milo Winter, see “Images” below) 2) We tend to run. 3) We tend to get caught. 4) Why and how we run and the ins-and-outs of our course: we’ll examine more later B) The Cobbler and the Banker 1) Gregoire sings with all the greater joy now that he has known what the bondage of greed is. 2) Now he is all the more grateful for what he has!
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V. Something about fables A) Fables can help ease us into noticing, listening, and praying. 1) So I’ll often follow a rhythm of a handful of fables and then a parable. B) Defining fables 1) Not easy to define 2) Often applied to folktales, legends fairy tales, etc., but fables are distinct. 3) Fables are effective, engaging, and enjoyable stories that have a typical form and affect 4) Theon (first century AD) defined the fable as a fictitious story representing truth, but this is too broad. 5) Often thought of as an animal story (a) However, fables includes other sorts of characters: humans, gods, trees, winds. (b) A fable is not tied to a particular content at all; it is rather a specific literary form. C) The key to understanding the fable: its power to invite 1) That invitation starts with the astounding way that Aesop’s stories have invited many others; it continues in the fact that early fables have invited so many varied and genial retellings of the same stories. 2) Even when a story is told the same way, it invites so many different understandings of its meaning, and it invites so many delightful and incisive illustrations. 3) My definition is: An Aesopic fable is a, short past-tense fictional narrative that invites perception of a point about how to live life. Whatever moral the fabulist gives, if any, a good fable is so structured as to invite us to read a particular pointed meaning. That point need not be profound or particularly uplifting or ethical. It may in fact be self-serving or cynical. A fable is always a metaphor, a story with a point, but a point that can never be exhausted by statement. The leap from story to application will always involve our perception, will invite and demand our perception, and no one person, even the fabulist, can state that point exhaustively. 4) Fabula docet (the fable teaches), the tradition says, by laying out engaging material and provoking students to put it together for themselves. D) Related Genres 1) Proverbs, which sum up the pointed perception to which fable invites: look before you leap, put your shoulder to the wheel, familiarity breeds contempt, etc.
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2) Joke: Fables are identical in structure to one of the most popular forms of the joke, a short fictitious past-tense narrative that culminates in a point. (a) In a joke, the point is usually not about how to live life but rather about the incongruities of life. 3) Parable, as we know it in the New Testament: whereas fables invite perception, parables invite reconsideration of values. Parables keep on raising fresh questions for us on our way through life: who is my neighbor? What do I think of those who were lost and are found? What have I built on that is rock, and what have I built on that is sand? E) Qualities of fables 1) One touchstone for fables is that they avoid the magic that one finds regularly in myths, folktales, and fairy tales. 2) With a few exceptions, the only magic in fables is that every character can speak. The biggest exception I know is the story of The Goose That Laid The Golden Eggs. That fable is a good reminder for us near the beginning of this series that the process of letting good stories touch us is the important thing, not just the specific product we can identify or evaluate. We need to attend to the process itself and keep listening, for stories keep inviting. 3) The perception to which a given fable invites is so dependent on its human context that some editors refuse to articulate morals for the fables. For me, the varying morals are one reason why I like fables. These stories are so good that they involve us. They question us and our perceptions, and we reveal ourselves in the way we understand them. It’s only natural then that responses to them will vary so much. Different people will naturally feel invited to different perceptions. 4) And here is some of the invitation and gift of fables for us: they ask us to think imaginatively and concretely, to perceive while we laugh, to play our way into understanding, to sense and to accept life’s analogies. They challenge us to jump from a little story to our lives. We listen to stories new and old so that they can become even more our stories and tell us something about our lives. We who tend so easily to naive literalism enjoy in fables a kind of thinking that invites us to see and use imaginative patterns in our lives and those of others. F) Chief fabulists 1) Aesop 2) La Fontaine (e.g., The Cobbler and Banker) 3) Krylov (e.g., The Sightseer) 4) Panchatantra and Kalila and Dimna (e.g., Talkative Tortoise) G) Recommended: 1) Aesop for Children by Milo Winter
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2) Aesop’s Fables, Laura Gibbs, Oxford University Press World’s Classic Series, 2008
VI. Fables’ sense of fathers and of gods A) As a preparation for hearing a story about a father that for Jesus reveals who God is, let’s remember a fable about fathers and several about gods. 1) The Bundle of Sticks (a) Our frequent sense of father: bettering, correcting, teaching B) Fables’ view of God 1) The Man and the Wooden God 2) The Cat and Venus 3) The Frogs Who Desired a King
VII. Jesus’ sense of God: The Prodigal Father A) A helpful Scripture passage 1) Who is the God to whom Jesus introduces us? B) Prodigal father’s kind of love: my comments on the Prodigal Son C) Notice some particulars in the third story (Luke 15:11-32): 1) The thrust of the younger son’s request for his share 2) The father’s agreement to give him his share 3) The younger son’s “confession” 4) The father’s seeing him a long way off 5) The older brother’s attitude to his father 6) The place of both judgment and personal connection in this story D) The father in this story is Jesus’ image of the God he calls “Father” 1) To meet God is to experience affection and to be invited 2) Both sons experience this double mystery
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FABLES, PARABLES, AND PICTURES
The Man and the Wooden God (Trans. Joseph Jacobs 41) IN the old days men used to worship stocks and stones and idols, and prayed to them to give them luck. It happened that a Man had often prayed to a wooden idol he had received from his father, but his luck never seemed to change. He prayed and he prayed, but still he remained as unlucky as ever. One day in the greatest rage he went to the Wooden God, and with one blow swept it down from its pedestal. The idol broke in two, and what did he see? An immense number of coins flying all over the place.
36. The Gnat and the Bull (Trans. V. S. Vernon Jones, 1912)
A Gnat alighted on one of the horns of a Bull, and remained sitting there for a considerable time. When it had rested sufficiently and was about to fly away, it said to the Bull, “Do you mind if I go now?” The Bull merely raised his eyes and remarked, without interest, “It’s all one to me; I didn't notice when you came, and I shan't know when you go away.”
We may often be of more consequence in our own eyes than in the eyes of our neighbours. Illustration by Arthur Rackham.
57. Jupiter and the Monkey Jupiter issued a proclamation to all the beasts, and offered a prize to the one who, in his judgment, produced the most beautiful offspring. Among the rest came the Monkey, carrying a baby monkey in her arms, a hairless, flat-nosed little fright. When they saw it, the gods all burst into peal on peal of laughter; but the Monkey hugged her little one to her, and said, “Jupiter may give the prize to whomsoever he likes: but I shall always think my baby the most beautiful of them all.”
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51. THE STAG AND HIS REFLECTION (Aesop for Children)
A Stag, drinking from a crystal spring, saw himself mirrored in the clear water. He greatly admired the graceful arch of his antlers, but he was very much ashamed of his spindling legs.
"How can it be," he sighed, “that I should be cursed with such legs when I have so magnificent a crown.”
At that moment he scented a panther and in an instant was bounding away through the forest. But as he ran his wide-spreading antlers caught in the branches of the trees, and soon the Panther overtook him. Then the Stag perceived that the legs of which he was so ashamed would have saved him had it not been for the useless ornaments on his head.
We often make much of the ornamental and despise the useful. Illustration by Milo Winter.
THE COBBLER AND THE FINANCIER. (La Fontaine, Trans. Elizur Wright, 1841)
A COBBLER sang from morn till night; 'Twas sweet and marvellous to hear. His trills and quavers told the ear Of more contentment and delight, The cobbler's song drove sleep away; And much he wished that Heaven had made Sleep a commodity of trade, In market sold, like food and drink, So much an hour, so much a wink. Enjoyed by that laborious wight, Than e'er enjoyed the sages seven, Or any mortals short of heaven.
His neighbor, on the other hand, With gold in plenty at command, But little sang, and slumbered less— A financier of great success. If e'er he dozed at break of day,
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At last, our songster did he call To meet him in his princely hall. Said he, Now, honest Gregory, What may your yearly earnings be? My yearly earnings! faith, good sir, I never go, at once, so far, The cheerful cobbler said, And queerly scratched his head,— I never reckon in that way, But cobble on from day to day, Content with daily bread.
Indeed! Well, Gregory, pray, What may your earnings be per day? Why, sometimes more and sometimes less. The worst of all, I must confess, (And but for which our gains would be A pretty sight, indeed, to see,) Is that the days are made so many In which we cannot earn a penny— The sorest ill the poor man feels: They tread upon each other's heels, Those idle days of holy saints! And though the year is shingled o'er, The parson keeps a-finding more! With smiles provoked by these complaints, Replied the lordly financier, I'll give you better cause to sing. These hundred pounds I hand you here Will make you happy as a king. Go, spend them with a frugal heed; They'll long supply your every need.
The cobbler thought the silver more Than he had ever dreamed, before, The mines for ages could produce, Or world, with all its people, use.
He took it home, and there did hide, And with it laid his joy aside. No more of song, no more of sleep, But cares, suspicions in their stead, And false alarms, by fancy fed. His eyes and ears their vigils keep,
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And not a cat can tread the floor But seems a thief slipped through the door.
At last, poor man! Up to the financier he ran,— Then in his morning nap profound: O, give me back my songs, cried he, And sleep, that used so sweet to be, And take the money, every pound!
80. THE GOOSE AND THE GOLDEN EGG Aesop for Children (1919) There was once a Countryman who possessed the most wonderful Goose you can imagine, for every day when he visited the nest, the Goose had laid a beautiful, glittering, golden egg.
The Countryman took the eggs to market and soon began to get rich. But it was not long before he grew impatient with the Goose because she gave him only a single golden egg a day. He was not getting rich fast enough.
Then one day, after he had finished counting his money, the idea came to him that he could get all the golden eggs at once by killing the Goose and cutting it open. But when the deed was done, not a single golden egg did he find, and his precious Goose was dead.
Those who have plenty want more and so lose all they have.
13. THE BUNDLE OF STICKS Aesop for Children (1919)
A certain Father had a family of Sons, who were forever quarreling among themselves. No words he could say did the least good, so he cast about in his mind for some very striking example that should make them see that discord would lead them to misfortune.
One day when the quarreling had been much more violent than usual and each of the Sons was moping in a surly manner, he asked one of them to bring him a bundle of sticks. Then handing the bundle to each of his Sons in turn he told them to try to break it. But although each one tried his best, none was able to do so.
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The Father then untied the bundle and gave the sticks to his Sons to break one by one. This they did very easily.
“My Sons,” said the Father, “do you not see how certain it is that if you agree with each other and help each other, it will be impossible for your enemies to injure you? But if you are divided among yourselves, you will be no stronger than a single stick in that bundle.”
In unity is strength.
Illustration by Walter Crane. 147. VENUS AND THE CAT Vernon Jones (1912)
A Cat fell in love with a handsome young man, and begged the goddess Venus to change her into a woman. Venus was very gracious about it, and changed her at once into a beautiful maiden, whom the young man fell in love with at first sight and shortly afterwards married. One day Venus thought she would like to see whether the Cat had changed her habits as well as her form; so she let a mouse run loose in the room where they were. Forgetting everything, the young woman had no sooner seen the mouse than up she jumped and was after it like a shot: at which the goddess was so disgusted that she changed her back again into a Cat.
Illustration by Arthur Rackham. The Parable of the Prodigal Son Then he said, “A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them. After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any. Coming to his senses he thought, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger. I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”’ So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against
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heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ Then the celebration began. Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, ‘Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him. He said to his father in reply, ‘Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’ He said to him, ‘My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’”
25. THE FROGS WHO WISHED FOR A KING (Aesop for Children, 1912) The Frogs were tired of governing themselves. They had so much freedom that it had spoiled them, and they did nothing but sit around croaking in a bored manner and wishing for a government that could entertain them with the pomp and display of royalty, and rule them in a way to make them know they were being ruled. No milk and water government for them, they declared. So they sent a petition to Jupiter asking for a king.
Jupiter saw what simple and foolish creatures they were, but to keep them quiet and make them think they had a king he threw down a huge log, which fell into the water with a great splash. The Frogs hid themselves among the reeds and grasses, thinking the new king to be some fearful giant. But they soon discovered how tame and peaceable King Log was. In a short time the younger Frogs were using him for a diving platform, while the older Frogs made him a meeting place, where they complained loudly to Jupiter about the government. Illustration by Milo Winter. To teach the Frogs a lesson the ruler of the gods now sent a Crane to be king of Frogland. The Crane proved to be a very different sort of king from old King Log. He gobbled up the poor Frogs right and left and they soon saw what fools they had been. In mournful croaks they begged Jupiter to take away the cruel tyrant before they should all be destroyed.
“How now!” cried Jupiter. “Are you not yet content? You have what you asked for and so you have only yourselves to blame for your misfortunes.”
Be sure you can better your condition before you seek to change.
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. What is your sense of God these days?
2. Is there any place in life where you are called, like the owner of the goose laying golden eggs, to love the process and not to seek an immediate result?
3. How is Jesus’ sense of God presented in the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) different from your sense of God?
4. Is there something of the younger son in you?
5. Is there something of the older son in you?
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Conference 3: The Human Train Wreck: What Happens When We Do Not Let Ourselves Be Loved by God as We Are
I. The Ass and The Lap Dog A) What happens when I don't start with letting myself be loved by God as I am? B) What happens when we do not start with gratitude for being loved?
II. Fables are great at depicting the dissatisfaction that ensues. A) We're unhappy. 1) Juno and the Peacock 2) We threaten even if we get what we want to remain unhappy. B) We try to be something else and end up hurting or even destroying ourselves. 1) The Ox and the Frog C) We spend our energy trying to get but we end up losing. 1) Dog and the Shadow D) As we saw in the last conference, we are like the stag at the pool: 1) We misread what is lovable and good about us. 2) We find out, perhaps too late, what was really a gift, like the stag’s swift legs. 3) We end up being hurt by what is good in itself, but what we wrongly prize above all else, like the stag admiring his antlers. E) The lure is always like that offered Adam and Eve: 1) You’ll be like gods. 2) We end up not only losing but hiding, ashamed, and embarrassed. F) The issue throughout these stories: 1) We are dissatisfied with what we are. 2) We want to be or to have something different, and we often lose ourselves in the process. 3) In one way or another, we try to gain something of the world and lose ourselves.
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G) These conferences offer a sense of what is happening and give a more positive, freeing spirituality based in gratitude.
III. For now the important thing is to see, in story, the pattern of what I am calling envy. A) That pattern is most basically that we try to expand our identity and instead lose some or all of it. B) Self-concept: The Crow and the Pitcher vs. The Eagle and the Crow C) Walter Crane puts this fable of a misguided crow on the same picture as the smart crow above. For now let’s attend to the one below! 1) The eagle flew off with a lamb; Then the crow thought to lift an old ram; In his eaglish conceit The wool tangled his feet, And the shepherd laid hold of the sham. 2) In many versions the shepherd crops the crow’s wings and takes him home to his children. “Here,” he says, “this crow thinks that he is an eagle!”
IV. The Lion and the Hare A) A lion came upon a sleeping hare and was about to eat him; but just then he saw a stag going by and he let go of the hare to pursue the stag. After a long chase he failed to overtake the stag, and when he returned to get the hare, that, too, was gone. “This is what I deserve,” he said, “for letting go the meal in my hands in the hope of getting a larger one out of reach.” (Perry 148).
V. The Pharisee and Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14) A) Jesus’ instinctive view of religion and of how to relate to God B) The tax collector is grateful for receiving himself in forgiveness. C) The Pharisee proclaims himself, declares his identity. 1) Compares and judges 2) Bases his identity on performance 3) Has God wrapped up in a contract D) Luke cleverly has him talking to himself. 1) He represents the opposite of gratitude. 2) We are envious even of our better selves.
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E) Upshot: the tax collector, Jesus says, went home justified. 1) That is, he related to God, and that's enough for Jesus: He related to God now, where he is. 2) Salvation for Jesus happens when people relate to God, rely on God, turn to God, and receive God. F) The issue is relating to God now and finding our identity given in love.
VI. The turtle wanting to fly A) We can learn from the train wrecks of our life and of others’ lives. B) The route of envy, of trying to be someone else, will not help us. C) At the judgment God will not ask us why we weren’t Jesus; He will ask us why we weren’t ourselves.
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FABLES, PARABLES, AND IMAGES
100. THE ASS AND THE LAP DOG Aesop for Children
There was once an Ass whose Master also owned a Lap Dog. This Dog was a favorite and received many a pat and kind word from his Master, as well as choice bits from his plate. Every day the Dog would run to meet the Master, frisking playfully about and leaping up to lick his hands and face.
All this the Ass saw with much discontent. Though he was well fed, he had much work to do; besides, the Master hardly ever took any notice of him.
Now the jealous Ass got it into his silly head that all he had to do to win his Master's favor was to act like the Dog. So one day he left his stable and clattered eagerly into the house.
Finding his Master seated at the dinner table, he kicked up his heels and, with a loud bray, pranced giddily around the table, upsetting it as he did so. Then he planted his forefeet on his Master's knees and rolled out his tongue to lick the Master's face, as he had seen the Dog do. But his weight upset the chair, and Ass and man rolled over together in the pile of broken dishes from the table.
The Master was much alarmed at the strange behavior of the Ass, and calling for help, soon attracted the attention of the servants. When they saw the danger the Master was in from the clumsy beast, they set upon the Ass and drove him with kicks and blows back to the stable. There they left him to mourn the foolishness that had brought him nothing but a sound beating.
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97. THE PEACOCK AND JUNO Trans. V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
The Peacock was greatly discontented because he had not a beautiful voice like the nightingale, and he went and complained to Juno about it. “The nightingale’s song,” said he, “is the envy of all the birds; but whenever I utter a sound I become a laughing-stock.” The goddess tried to console him by saying, “You have not, it is true, the power of song, but then you far excel all the rest in beauty: your neck flashes like the emerald and your splendid tail is a marvel of gorgeous colour.” But the Peacock was not appeased. “What is the use,” said he, “of being beautiful, with a voice like mine?” Then Juno replied, with a shade of sternness in her tones, “Fate has allotted to all their destined gifts: to yourself beauty, to the eagle strength, to the nightingale song, and so on to all the rest in their degree; but you alone are dissatisfied with your portion. Make, then, no more complaints. For, if your present wish were granted, you would quickly find cause for fresh discontent.”
100. THE OX AND THE FROG
Two little Frogs were playing about at the edge of a pool when an Ox came down to the water to drink, and by accident trod on one of them and crushed the life out of him. When the old Frog missed him, she asked his brother where he was. "He is dead, mother," said the little Frog; "an enormous big creature with four legs came to our pool this morning and trampled him down in the mud." "Enormous, was he? Was he as big as this?" said the Frog, puffing herself out to look as big as possible. "Oh! yes, _much_ bigger," was the answer. The Frog puffed herself out still more. "Was he as big as this?" said she. "Oh! yes, yes, mother, _MUCH_ bigger," said the little Frog. And yet again she puffed and puffed herself out till she was almost as round as a ball. "As big as...?" she began—but then she burst.
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THE VAIN JACKDAW (James 7)
A JACKDAW, as vain and conceited as Jackdaw could be, picked up the feathers which some Peacocks had shed, stuck them amongst his own, and despising his old companions, introduced himself with the greatest assurance into a flock of those beautiful birds. They, instantly detecting the intruder, stripped him of his borrowed plumes, and falling upon him with their beaks, sent him about his business. The unlucky Jackdaw, sorely punished and deeply sorrowing, betook himself to his former companions, and would have flocked with them again as if nothing had happened. But they, recollecting what airs he had given himself, drummed him out of their society, while one of those whom he had so lately despised, read him this lecture:
“Had you been contented with what nature made you:—you would have escaped the chastisement of your betters and also the contempt of your equals.”
61. THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN Trans. V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
An Ass found a Lion’s Skin, and dressed himself up in it. Then he went about frightening every one he met, for they all took him to be a lion, men and beasts alike, and took to their heels when they saw him coming. Elated by the success of his trick, he loudly brayed in triumph. The Fox heard him, and recognised him at once for the Ass he was, and said to him, “Oho, my friend, it’s you, is it? I, too, should have been afraid if I hadn't heard your voice.”
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94. THE DOG AND THE SHADOW (Trans. V. S. Vernon Jones, 1912)
A Dog was crossing a plank bridge over a stream with a piece of meat in his mouth, when he happened to see his own reflection in the water. He thought it was another dog with a piece of meat twice as big; so he let go his own, and flew at the other dog to get the larger piece. But, of course, all that happened was that he got neither; for one was only a shadow, and the other was carried away by the current.
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Illustration by Walter Crane: Two Fables of Crows
JAMES 36 THE TORTOISE AND THE EAGLE
A TORTOISE, dissatisfied with his lowly life, when he beheld so many of the birds, his neighbours, disporting themselves in the clouds, and thinking that, if he could but once get up into the air, he could soar with the best of them, called one day upon an Eagle and offered him all the treasures of Ocean if he could only teach him to fly. The Eagle would have declined the task, assuring him that the thing was not only absurd but impossible, but being further pressed by the entreaties and promises of the Tortoise he at length consented to do for him the best he could. So taking him up to a great height in the air and loosing his hold upon him, “Now, then!” cried the Eagle; but the Tortoise, before he could answer him a word, fell plump upon a rock, and was dashed to pieces.
Pride shall have a fall.
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The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector
He then addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. “Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’ But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’ I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. How might you be tempted to want to be something other than who and what you are?
2. Which of the fables told here touches you most?
3. What do you see Jesus expressing in his picture of the Pharisee praying in the temple?
4. What do you see Jesus expressing in his picture of the tax collector praying in the temple?
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Conference 4: The School of Hard Knocks: Discernment and Decision
I. Discernment A) Fable: the serpent licks the file B) Bad things happen when: 1) We don’t start from letting God love us as we are 2) When we don’t build from gratitude C) The invitation, then, is to learn from watching our experiences how decisions we make hurt us. 1) Watching, learning, applying what we learn is discernment. 2) The discerning often takes the form of sensing in which direction you are being led. 3) Past experience has shown us—maybe dozens of times—where we end up with a decision like this one. D) Like my model railroad trains going through switches, but here the loop does not repeat! E) Rev. Tom Ward F) Good judgment comes from good experiences, which are usually the results of bad judgments.
II. Take a look, through stories, at some of the decisions we make: A) We looked earlier at the punitive sense of gods in the story of the frogs wanting a king. B) Look at that same story now in terms of the frogs’ two decisions to ask for a king. C) Our decisions lead to self-destructive requests. D) Our instinctive pattern of behavior ends up in our hurting ourselves. 1) Perry 120: The dog bites the hand of the man trying to save him from the well he has fallen into E) We conceive misguided solutions 1) The Mistress and Her Servants (Perry 55) F) We trust the wrong things to protect us from harm: “I will protect you.” G) We aren’t alert to the places from which we can be hurt H) The Stag with One Eye (Perry 69)
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III. But we can learn from our own—often repeated—experiences of bad judgment. A) Take a look also through stories of discerning, that is, learning from OUR OWN experience to perceive, what is there: 1) We learn from falls to see what is in front of us (a) The astrologer who falls into the well (Perry 40) 2) 2. We learn from experience how things or people behave: (a) Shepherd and sea and dates: learning from experience 3) It may be that our learning is painful. (a) The boy crying “wolf” thought it was fun. He learned the hard way that he was making a mistake.
IV. We can sometimes, even through fables, learn from the experiences and reactions of others. A) The Lion and the Fox: footprints B) There is of course out and out evil in the world, well exemplified by a vicious frog (Perry 384) C) But more frequently we face the threat of evil operating under the guise of good. We need Thomas More’s sage advice: 1) “God made man to serve him wittily in the tangle of his mind.” D) Good judgment comes from good experiences, which are usually the results of bad judgments. E) Many poor judgments arise from our dissatisfaction with our God-given identity, with our reach to be other. F) We are Adam and Eve all over again, yielding to the lure: “You’ll be like gods.” G) The destructive part is not just for the person who makes a bad decision. 1) As Bradley notes about tragedy: (a) The tree that falls on other trees: (b) Our bad decision hurts other people.
V. Jesus and Satan in the desert (Matthew 4) A) Sounds like a rabbinic debate B) Jesus’ discernment and decision-making are tested here.
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C) I’ve learned some things about temptation in my life: (a) That you can tell a person by his/her temptations; they're probably not going to go away or change a lot in life (b) That we all do a kind of dance with our demons (c) And so it’s good to be able to say to them: “I know you! You really took me for a ride last time. This time I think I just won't get into the car!” (d) I’ve learned that the second sin is often much worse than the first: the first might be impatience or anger or fear, like both Peter denying and Judas betraying Jesus. But the second sin of Judas was to give up on God and himself, and that’s the terrible part. (e) I've learned to watch not for what the temptation offers but for where it takes me: what kind of me comes out of the other end of this process, with what kind of receptivity to others and to God, and with what kind of peace and hope? (f) I’ve learned to watch for the tone of voice of temptations: especially is it cynical, discouraged, disappointed, restless, raw. D) What are the temptations here? E) Let’s watch Jesus and listen for the voices at work and wonder where listening to them will carry him. F) What kind of Messiah, what kind of man will emerge?
VI. First Temptation: turning stones to bread A) Voices say things like: 1) Take care of yourself first. (a) If you don't look out for you, who will? (b) You need to control whatever is around you. (c) Let’s get God to give you a clear sign that God is really with you. 2) What are you living from, bread or God? (a) Don’t you really need God more than you need bread? (b) Do you really need to control everything around you? B) What kind of Messiah, what kind of person emerges from listening to the first set of voices? To the second?
VII. Second temptation: throw yourself down from the temple. A) Two sets of voices
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1) First set of voices (a) Have people take notice! (b) Make a mark! (c) Be somebody! (d) Prove yourself by what you can do! (e) If you don’t test your security, how will you know that you are safe? (f) Isn’t security the most important thing in life? 2) Second set of voices (a) Doesn’t your only real security come from the loving hand of God that already supports you? (b) Can you trust that hand? (c) Can you really add a year to your life or an inch to your stature? B) What kind of person emerges from listening to the first set of voices? To the second?
VIII. Third temptation: “I can give kingdoms to you.” A) Two sets of voices 1) First set of voices (a) Get a power base. (b) Establish what is yours. (c) This is mine. Look at me! (d) You can be like god! 2) Second set of voices (a) Are people to be traded, manipulated, made into steps for your power? (b) Can you seek power and then try to use it for God, or does setting the priorities that way already shape you? (c) You worship God on Sunday. Which God do you worship the rest of the week? B) What kind of person emerges from listening to the first set of voices? To the second? C) Our brother Jesus has experienced the human struggle, and He experiences it in us now.
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D) We can ask for His help and His spirit to make decisions like His, to be, in the tangle of our lives, as discerning as He was. E) Fable: The Cat, the Cock, and the Young Mouse
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FABLES, PARABLES, AND IMAGES
Weasel and File (Perry 059)
A weasel enters a smith’s shop and 1icks a file until the blood flows from her tongue. Thinking that the blood comes from the file, she keeps on licking unti1 her tongue is all gone.
215. THE GARDENER AND HIS DOG (V. S. Vernon Jones, 1912)
A Gardner's Dog fell into a deep well, from which his master used to draw water for the plants in his garden with a rope and a bucket. Failing to get the Dog out by means of these, the Gardener went down into the well himself in order to fetch him up. But the Dog thought he had come to make sure of drowning him; so he bit his master as soon as he came within reach, and hurt him a good deal, with the result that he left the Dog to his fate and climbed out of the well, remarking, “It serves me quite right for trying to save so determined a suicide.”
23. THE MISTRESS AND HER SERVANTS (V. S. Vernon Jones, 1912)
A Widow, thrifty and industrious, had two servants, whom she kept pretty hard at work. They were not allowed to lie long abed in the mornings, but the old lady had them up and doing as soon as the cock crew. They disliked intensely having to get up at such an hour, especially in winter-time: and they thought that if it were not for the cock waking up their Mistress so horribly early, they could sleep longer. So they caught it and wrung its neck. But they weren’t prepared for the consequences. For what happened was that their Mistress, not hearing the cock crow as usual, waked them up earlier than ever, and set them to work in the middle of the night.
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79. THE TWO POTS (Aesop for Children, 1919)
Two Pots, one of brass and the other of clay, stood together on the hearthstone. One day the Brass Pot proposed to the Earthen Pot that they go out into the world together. But the Earthen Pot excused himself, saying that it would be wiser for him to stay in the corner by the fire.
“It would take so little to break me,” he said. “You know how fragile I am. The least shock is sure to shatter me!”
“Don't let that keep you at home,” urged the Brass Pot. “I shall take very good care of you. If we should happen to meet anything hard I will step between and save you.”
So the Earthen Pot at last consented, and the two set out side by side, jolting along on three stubby legs first to this side, then to that, and bumping into each other at every step.
The Earthen Pot could not survive that sort of companionship very long. They had not gone ten paces before the Earthen Pot cracked, and at the next jolt he flew into a thousand pieces. Illustration by Milo Winter.
149. THE STAG WITH ONE EYE (V. S. Vernon Jones, 1912)
A Stag, blind of one eye, was grazing close to the sea-shore and kept his sound eye turned towards the land, so as to be able to perceive the approach of the hounds, while the blind eye he turned towards the sea, never suspecting that any danger would threaten him from that quarter.
As it fell out, however, some sailors, coasting along the shore, spied him and shot an arrow at him, by which he was mortally wounded. As he lay dying, he said to himself, “Wretch that I am! I bethought me of the dangers of the land, whence none assailed me: but I feared no peril from the sea, yet thence has come my ruin.”
Misfortune often assails us from an unexpected quarter.
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THE SHEPHERD AND THE SEA VI. 15 by Ivan Krylov
HARD by King Neptune’s realm, a shepherd came to graze; He built upon the shore a cosy little hut, And fed his sheep around this pleasant spot; And happily he passed his days. He knew no pomp or pride, he knew no misery, Indeed, his pleasure in his lot Was such as, well may be, the most of kings have not. But day by day observing on the sea The ships that carried in new stores of every treasure, The rich and divers wares piled up upon the quays, The warehouse packed beyond its measure, And how their owners lived in luxury and ease - The smiles of Fortune he was keen to court; He sold his house and flock, bought wares of every sort, Freighted a vessel and set out from port. His venture was but short! How treacherous the sea, there's none but knows, And this he had to learn; the coast not out of sight, A fearful storm arose; The ship was wrecked, the cargo sank outright; He scarce could struggle to the shore. Thanks to the hunger of the deep, once more He takes a shepherd's place, but with this difference - No longer for himself he labours, The sheep he keeps are now his neighbour's. A hireling! Yet although your losses be immense, There's many a loss that time and patience can restore. He saves on that, he saves on this, He saves, till in the end a second flock is his: The shepherd of his sheep is master as before. One day, upon the sandy shore, The sun above him blazing, His flock beside him grazing, He sits and scans the ocean o'er. Now scarce a ripple shows on all that mighty tide, So peaceful lies the main; And smoothly to the quay the stately vessels glide. `My friend,' he cries, `you want more money, it is plain; But if 'tis mine, you ask in vain; Find some one else, whose mind is still unsteady; You've had your toll from me already. Fools, such as I was, there maybe; But not a farthing more you ever get from me!'
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18. THE SHEPHERD BOY AND THE WOLF (Aesop for Children, 1919)
A Shepherd Boy tended his master’s Sheep near a dark forest not far from the village. Soon he found life in the pasture very dull. All he could do to amuse himself was to talk to his dog or play on his shepherd’s pipe.
One day as he sat watching the Sheep and the quiet forest, and thinking what he would do should he see a Wolf, he thought of a plan to amuse himself.
His Master had told him to call for help should a Wolf attack the flock, and the Villagers would drive it away. So now, though he had not seen anything that even looked like a Wolf, he ran toward the village shouting at the top of his voice, “Wolf! Wolf!”
As he expected, the Villagers who heard the cry dropped their work and ran in great excitement to the pasture. But when they got there they found the Boy doubled up with laughter at the trick he had played on them.
A few days later the Shepherd Boy again shouted, “Wolf! Wolf!” Again the Villagers ran to help him, only to be laughed at again.
Then one evening as the sun was setting behind the forest and the shadows were creeping out over the pasture, a Wolf really did spring from the underbrush and fall upon the Sheep.
In terror the Boy ran toward the village shouting “Wolf! Wolf!” But though the Villagers heard the cry, they did not run to help him as they had before. “He cannot fool us again,” they said.
The Wolf killed a great many of the Boy’s sheep and then slipped away into the forest.
Liars are not believed even when they speak the truth. Illustration by Milo Winter.
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98. THE OLD LION AND THE FOX (Aesop for Children, 1919)
An old Lion, whose teeth and claws were so worn that it was not so easy for him to get food as in his younger days, pretended that he was sick. He took care to let all his neighbors know about it, and then lay down in his cave to wait for visitors. And when they came to offer him their sympathy, he ate them up one by one.
The Fox came too, but he was very cautious about it. Standing at a safe distance from the cave, he inquired politely after the Lion’s health. The Lion replied that he was very ill indeed, and asked the Fox to step in for a moment. But Master Fox very wisely stayed outside, thanking the Lion very kindly for the invitation.
“I should be glad to do as you ask,” he added, “but I have noticed that there are many footprints leading into your cave and none coming out. Pray tell me, how do your visitors find their way out again?”
Take warning from the misfortunes of others.
92. THE FROG AND THE MOUSE (Aesop for Children, 1919)
A young Mouse in search of adventure was running along the bank of a pond where lived a Frog. When the Frog saw the Mouse, he swam to the bank and croaked: “Won't you pay me a visit? I can promise you a good time if you do.”
The Mouse did not need much coaxing, for he was very anxious to see the world and everything in it. But though he could swim a little, he did not dare risk going into the pond without some help.
The Frog had a plan. He tied the Mouse’s leg to his own with a tough reed. Then into the pond he jumped, dragging his foolish companion with him.
The Mouse soon had enough of it and wanted to return to shore; but the treacherous Frog had other plans. He pulled the Mouse down under the water and drowned him. But before he could untie the reed that bound him to the dead Mouse, a Hawk came sailing over the pond. Seeing the body of the Mouse floating on the water, the Hawk swooped down, seized the Mouse and carried it off, with the Frog dangling from its leg. Thus at one swoop he had caught both meat and fish for his dinner.
Those who seek to harm others often come to harm themselves through their own deceit.
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74. THE CAT, THE COCK, AND THE YOUNG MOUSE (Aesop for Children, 1919)
A very young Mouse, who had never seen anything of the world, almost came to grief the very first time he ventured out. And this is the story he told his mother about his adventures.
"I was strolling along very peaceably when, just as I turned the corner into the next yard, I saw two strange creatures. One of them had a very kind and gracious look, but the other was the most fearful monster you can imagine. You should have seen him.
“On top of his head and in front of his neck hung pieces of raw red meat. He walked about restlessly, tearing up the ground with his toes, and beating his arms savagely against his sides. The moment he caught sight of me he opened his pointed mouth as if to swallow me, and then he let out a piercing roar that frightened me almost to death.”
Can you guess who it was that our young Mouse was trying to describe to his mother? It was nobody but the Barnyard Cock and the first one the little Mouse had ever seen.
“If it had not been for that terrible monster,” the Mouse went on, “I should have made the acquaintance of the pretty creature, who looked so good and gentle. He had thick, velvety fur, a meek face, and a look that was very modest, though his eyes were bright and shining. As he looked at me he waved his fine long tail and smiled.
“I am sure he was just about to speak to me when the monster I have told you about let out a screaming yell, and I ran for my life.”
“My son,” said the Mother Mouse, “that gentle creature you saw was none other than the Cat. Under his kindly appearance, he bears a grudge against every one of us. The other was nothing but a bird who wouldn't harm you in the least. As for the Cat, he eats us. So be thankful, my child, that you escaped with your life, and, as long as you live, never judge people by their looks.”
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Matthew 4
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.
He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was hungry. The tempter approached and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.”
He said in reply, “It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you’ and ‘with their hands they will support you, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.’”
Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their magnificence, and he said to him, “All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.” At this, Jesus said to him, “Get away, Satan! It is written: ‘The Lord, your God, shall you worship and him alone shall you serve.’”
Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Can you track some decisions that looked good at the beginning but ended up taking you to a bad place?
2. Conversely, have you had some bad judgments that have taught you to have better experiences and to make better judgments?
3. What sort of temptation do you have to be ready for because it will keep recurring in one form or another?
4. Have you experienced a “second sin” of despair that hurt you much more than a first sin of weakness?
5. Does your Jesus experience real temptation? If so, do you have a sense of how He discerns and decides?
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Conference 5: Let’s Be Honest: See and Come
I. Being Honest A) The Hunter and the Horseman
II. A great challenge in life is to be honest about what’s there. Discerning demands admitting, and that’s hard. And following Jesus is an adventure. If we want a spiritual life, we will be asked into the unknown. A) Zimler: “Reasons are what we tell others to deceive ourselves” (pg. 68). 1) The Fox and the Grapes 2) The Wolf and the Lamb: a brutal fable B) Two funny fables about this penchant to deceive ourselves: 1) Medieval story of the wolf who has given up meat for lent but then sees a lamb and declares that the lamb is salmon before he devours him. 2) Similarly, a wolf confessing his sins asks the priest to hurry with the absolution because there are some sheep nearby that he does not want to miss eating. C) But not all the fables on self-deception are funny. 1) Eagle and Owl D) We want everything around and about us to be looking good: 1) I hide things from others and then I hide them from myself. 2) We floss the day we go to the dentist. 3) So often, I laugh at in you what I am ashamed of in me. 4) Fox without tail E) How difficult it is to help people own their faulty side! 1) We define ourselves by one aspect; we give power to a name we won’t admit. 2) Ostrich: “If I don’t see it, it’s not there.” We lose sight of so many possibilities! 3) Can I find a place where the grapes are available? 4) A good desire can keep me searching and open to the new. True desires grow out of gratitude for who we are. Suppress a good desire, and it goes to cynicism, anger, and depression. My suppressed desire will play out somewhere else. F) Jesus and the sin against the Holy Spirit: dishonesty when we could state the truth
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G) Classic story of coming to honesty is that of David and Nathan over Uriah: 1) David, lusted after Bathsheba, had made her pregnant, and had failed to cover up the pregnancy through her husband Uriah’s utter faithfulness to his military duty. David had Uriah set up in the front line of battle precisely so that he would be mortally wounded, and his plan succeeded. 2) 2 Samuel 12: 1-7 H) We all shy away from honesty about ourselves, but honesty is not the same as negativity. Especially in the USA, where the first commandment in the USA: Thou shalt be nice. The second commandment: Thou shalt believe that everything is nice. No! We will find God in what is there, and being honest about what is there is a good first step. I) That man is us! J) Honesty is in fact one of many adventures on which a disciple is called to embark.
III. Adventures: Come and See! A) Theme: If we want a spiritual life, we will be asked into the unknown. B) Meeting the unknown will involve setting aside our expectations, working through our disappointments, letting the bar be raised, enjoying new territory and even new dimensions of ourselves. 1) So much depends on how we view what is new and different! 2) A part of each of us despises adventures; we want what is predictable, manageable, familiar. 3) What we meet may not be what we expected. Are we ready for it to be less, different, surprising? C) A frequent pattern is that we are deceived once and give up on that effort. 1) Recall experience from last lecture: 2) Lots of experiences are mishandled the first time and we need to stick with them. D) Cormorant and reflection: deceived once, he gives up forever on fishing. E) Open yourself to the surprising and new things can happen, as when the lion lets himself laugh over the mouse that woke him up. The easy traditional thing is to punish the mouse, most simply by eating him. The adventuresome thing is to laugh over his promise to help someday, and then wonder if it will ever come true. So often it does! F) The horizon keeps advancing. Enter one adventure and it will lead to another. We amaze ourselves at the pilgrimages we trace from one adventure to another, where last year’s adventure is this year’s familiar territory.
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G) Fox and Lion: 1) The fox on seeing a lion for the first time was frightened almost to death; the second time that he saw one he was still frightened, but not so much as before; and on the third occasion he became so bold as to go all the way up to the lion and talk with him. (Perry 10) H) Interruptions are invitations 1) Invitation is the key to developing identity 2) The opposite of adventure is security, and leading a spiritual life means getting outside our secure zone. I) The dying man and his sons. 1) The lazy sons are lured into the adventure of hard work, of possessing their patrimony, of learning to love what is new. 2) They grow up! They find something new!
IV. “Fear not” is the most frequent commandment in the Gospels. A) The norm is no longer me, my comfort, my security.
B) Rohr: If there's no adventure in your life, you're already dead. C) Hopkins: O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small Durance deal with that steep or deep. D) Jesus called into being the suffering servant. 1) The disciple cannot know where the teacher will take him. 2) What if God and life are our teachers? E) You don’t have to seek adventures; you have to be ready for them, for they will find you! 1) We have to respond to them. 2) Fear is a normal reaction. 3) Security is a false dream. 4) It shuts us down in the face of the invitation to adventure. 5) Fear is natural but imprisoning.
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F) Man who buried his talent: Matthew 25:14-30 1) What a waste! 2) Our Christian life calls us to radical honesty and invites us to amazing adventures.
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FABLES, PARABLES, AND PICTURES
402. The Hunter and the Horseman (Synt. 49, H 163; Crusius 237; TMI)
A hunter who had caught a rabbit was walking along the road with it when he met a man on horseback who asked to see the rabbit on the pretext that he thought of buying it. But as soon as the horseman had the rabbit in his hands he galloped away. The hunter ran after him, vainly hoping to overtake him, and when the rider had far outdistanced him, he shouted to him, “Go on then, I don't care; I had decided to give you the rabbit anyhow.”
12. THE FOX AND THE GRAPES (Aesop for Children, 1919)
A Fox one day spied a beautiful bunch of ripe grapes hanging from a vine trained along the branches of a tree. The grapes seemed ready to burst with juice, and the Fox’s mouth watered as he gazed longingly at them.
The bunch hung from a high branch, and the Fox had to jump for it. The first time he jumped he missed it by a long way. So he walked off a short distance and took a running leap at it, only to fall short once more. Again and again he tried, but in vain.
Now he sat down and looked at the grapes in disgust.
“What a fool I am," he said. “Here I am wearing myself out to get a bunch of sour grapes that are not worth gaping for.”
And off he walked very, very scornfully.
There are many who pretend to despise and belittle that which is beyond their reach.
Illustration by Milo Winter.
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45. THE WOLF AND THE LAMB (Aesop for Children, 1919)
A stray Lamb stood drinking early one morning on the bank of a woodland stream. That very same morning a hungry Wolf came by farther up the stream, hunting for something to eat. He soon got his eyes on the Lamb. As a rule Mr. Wolf snapped up such delicious morsels without making any bones about it, but this Lamb looked so very helpless and innocent that the Wolf felt he ought to have some kind of an excuse for taking its life. “How dare you paddle around in my stream and stir up all the mud!” he shouted fiercely. “You deserve to be punished severely for your rashness!” “But, your highness,” replied the trembling Lamb, “do not be angry! I cannot possibly muddy the water you are drinking up there. Remember, you are upstream and I am downstream.” “You do muddy it!” retorted the Wolf savagely. “And besides, I have heard that you told lies about me last year!” “How could I have done so?” pleaded the Lamb. “I wasn’t born until this year.” “If it wasn’t you, it was your brother!” “I have no brothers.” “Well, then,” snarled the Wolf, “It was someone in your family anyway. But no matter who it was, I do not intend to be talked out of my breakfast.” And without more words the Wolf seized the poor Lamb and carried her off to the forest. The tyrant can always find an excuse for his tyranny. The unjust will not listen to the reasoning of the innocent.
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The Eagle and the Owl (Dodsley 1761 PM #60482 II.29)
An eagle and an owl having entered into a league of mutual amity, one of the articles of their treaty was, that the former should not prey upon the younglings of the latter. But tell me, said the owl, should you know my little ones if you were to see them? Indeed I should not, replyed the eagle; but if you describe them to me, it will be sufficient. You are to observe then, returned the owl, in the first place, that the charming creatures are perfectly well shaped; in the next, that there is a remarkable sweetness and vivacity in their countenances; and then there is something in their voices so peculiarly melodious—‘Tis enough, interrupted the eagle; by these marks I cannot fail of distinguishing them: and you may depend upon their never receiving any injury from me. It happened not long afterwards, as the eagle was upon the wing in quest of his prey, that he discovered amidst the ruins of an old castle, a nest of grim-faced, ugly birds, with gloomy countenances, and a voice like that of the furies. These undoubtedly, said he, cannot be the offspring of my friend, and so I shall venture to make free with them. He had scarce finished his repast and departed, when the owl returned; who finding nothing of her brood remaining but the mangled carcase, broke out into the most bitter exclamations against the cruel and perfidious author of her calamity. A neighbouring bat, who over-heard her lamentations, and had been witness to what had passed between her and the eagle; very gravely told her, that she had no body to blame for this misfortune but herself; whose blind prejudices in favour of her children, had prompted her to give such a description of them, as did not resemble them in any one single feature or quality.
Illustration by Thomas Bewick.
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109. THE FOX WITHOUT A TAIL (Aesop for Children, 1919)
A Fox that had been caught in a trap, succeeded at last, after much painful tugging, in getting away. But he had to leave his beautiful bushy tail behind him.
For a long time he kept away from the other Foxes, for he knew well enough that they would all make fun of him and crack jokes and laugh behind his back. But it was hard for him to live alone, and at last he thought of a plan that would perhaps help him out of his trouble.
He called a meeting of all the Foxes, saying that he had something of great importance to tell the tribe. When they were all gathered together, the Fox Without a Tail got up and made a long speech about those Foxes who had come to harm because of their tails.
This one had been caught by hounds when his tail had become entangled in the hedge. That one had not been able to run fast enough because of the weight of his brush. Besides, it was well known, he said, that men hunt Foxes simply for their tails, which they cut off as prizes of the hunt. With such proof of the danger and uselessness of having a tail, said Master Fox, he would advise every Fox to cut it off, if he valued life and safety.
When he had finished talking, an old Fox arose, and said, smiling:
“Master Fox, kindly turn around for a moment, and you shall have your answer.”
When the poor Fox Without a Tail turned around, there arose such a storm of jeers and hooting, that he saw how useless it was to try any longer to persuade the Foxes to part with their tails.
Do not listen to the advice of him who seeks to lower you to his own level.
The Old Man and Death Aesop's Fables (Joseph Jacobs)
An old labourer, bent double with age and toil, was gathering sticks in a forest. At last he grew so tired and hopeless that he threw down the bundle of sticks, and cried out: “I cannot bear this life any longer. Ah, I wish Death would only come and take me!” As he spoke, Death, a grisly skeleton, appeared and said to him: “What wouldst thou, Mortal? I heard thee call me.” “Please, sir,” replied the woodcutter, “would you kindly help me to lift this faggot of sticks on to my shoulder?”
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2 Samuel 12: 1-7
The LORD sent Nathan to David, and when he came to him, he said: “Tell me how you judge this case: In a certain town there were two men, one rich, the other poor. The rich man had flocks and herds in great numbers. But the poor man had nothing at all except one little ewe lamb that he had bought. He nourished her, and she grew up with him and his children. Of what little he had she ate; from his own cup she drank; in his bosom she slept; she was like a daughter to him. Now, a visitor came to the rich man, but he spared his own flocks and herds to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him: he took the poor man’s ewe lamb and prepared it for the one who had come to him.” David grew very angry with that man and said to Nathan: “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves death! He shall make fourfold restitution for the lamb because he has done this and was unsparing.” Then Nathan said to David: “You are the man!
17. THE LION AND THE MOUSE (Aesop for Children, 1919)
A Lion lay asleep in the forest, his great head resting on his paws. A timid little Mouse came upon him unexpectedly, and in her fright and haste to get away, ran across the Lion's nose. Roused from his nap, the Lion laid his huge paw angrily on the tiny creature to kill her.
“Spare me!” begged the poor Mouse. “Please let me go and some day I will surely repay you.”
The Lion was much amused to think that a Mouse could ever help him. But he was generous and finally let the Mouse go.
Some days later, while stalking his prey in the forest, the Lion was caught in the toils of a hunter's net. Unable to free himself, he filled the forest with his angry roaring. The Mouse knew the voice and quickly found the Lion struggling in the net. Running to one of the great ropes that bound him, she gnawed it until it parted, and soon the Lion was free.
“You laughed when I said I would repay you,” said the Mouse. “Now you see that even a Mouse can help a Lion.”
A kindness is never wasted.
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78. THE FARMER AND HIS SONS (Aesop for Children, 1919)
A rich old farmer, who felt that he had not many more days to live, called his sons to his bedside. “My sons,” he said, “heed what I have to say to you. Do not on any account part with the estate that has belonged to our family for so many generations. Somewhere on it is hidden a rich treasure. I do not know the exact spot, but it is there, and you will surely find it. Spare no energy and leave no spot unturned in your search.”
The father died, and no sooner was he in his grave than the sons set to work digging with all their might, turning up every foot of ground with their spades, and going over the whole farm two or three times.
No hidden gold did they find; but at harvest time when they had settled their accounts and had pocketed a rich profit far greater than that of any of their neighbors, they understood that the treasure their father had told them about was the wealth of a bountiful crop, and that in their industry had they found the treasure.
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Matthew 25: 14-30: The Parable of the Talents.
“It will be as when a man who was going on a journey called in his servants and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents; to another, two; to a third, one—to each according to his ability. Then he went away. Immediately the one who received five talents went and traded with them, and made another five. Likewise, the one who received two made another two. But the man who received one went off and dug a hole in the ground and buried his master’s money. After a long time the master of those servants came back and settled accounts with them. The one who had received five talents came forward bringing the additional five. He said, ‘Master, you gave me five talents. See, I have made five more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’ [Then] the one who had received two talents also came forward and said, ‘Master, you gave me two talents. See, I have made two more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’ Then the one who had received the one talent came forward and said, ‘Master, I knew you were a demanding person, harvesting where you did not plant and gathering where you did not scatter; so out of fear I went off and buried your talent in the ground. Here it is back.’ His master said to him in reply, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I did not plant and gather where I did not scatter? Should you not then have put my money in the bank so that I could have got it back with interest on my return? Now then! Take the talent from him and give it to the one with ten. For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And throw this useless servant into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’
The Cormorant and the Reflection (Kalila and Dimna: Fables of Friendship and Betrayal. By Ramsay Wood, p. 155. London: Granada, 1982.)
There was once a cormorant who caught sight of a star's reflection on a gentel sea. Thinking this slowly wavering patch of light was a fish, he dived underwater and tried to catch it. Of course the cormorant failed, yet stubbornly he continued to dive again and again, believing that by effort alone he must eventually succeed. In the end he grew so angry and frustrated that he swore never again to dive after a fish.
From then onward, even though he suffered extreme hunger on a meager diet of small crabs, shrimps, and shells found along the shore, the cormorant refused to dive after any fish, for he assumed it was as impossible to catch as the star on the water.
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Where is it hard for you to be honest about what you are experiencing?
2. What is your reaction to Nathan’s story about the rich man who chose to consume the poor man’s ewe lamb?
3. What is your reaction when you cannot get the grapes you leap for?
4. Has being a Christian brought you some surprises and adventures?
5. Is there a talent that you are tempted to bury? Or is there perhaps a flaw that you would like to keep buried?
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Conference 6: Please Tell Me Who I Am
I. Security and identity A) The Fox and the Mask
II. Two Standards for fable talks A) Ignatius of Loyola discovered a Gospel strategy for personal liberation. I, like generations of Jesuits, have found this strategy at work in my life. Noticing it at work has helped me. This strategy continues to challenge me today and invite me into fuller life. It has helped me to translate it into contemporary and even personal terms. It’s about who we are and how God approaches and invites us. B) What we have said up to this point is: 1) Our lives need to be rooted in gratitude 2) Our decisions not rooted in grateful acceptance of who we are 3) Often enough end up hurting us. C) Spirituality involves attending to what is in front of us and noticing those decisions and those wounds. Living a vibrant spirituality exacts a high price of being honest about what is there in our lives. D) Two realities vie for our identity: 1) 1) One is the loving God revealed in Jesus Christ; this God is always inviting us to intimacy and always inviting us to take a next step in growing and serving. This God’s affection for us is operative in the care of all those who love us. 2) The other force vying for our identity I am calling envy. (a) Recall the stag at the pool dissatisfied with his legs but proud of his antlers. We are dissatisfied with what we are, we want to be or to have something different, and we often lose ourselves in the process. (b) In one way or another, we try to gain something of the world and lose ourselves. (c) The scriptural question gets answered: “What does it profit a person to gain the whole world but lose herself or himself?” E) I invite us now to look at how these two forces work themselves out in our lives. 1) Can we discern our experience to see how our decisions lead us to gain life or to lose it? 2) I remind us that growing is an adventure, a trip into the unknown.
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3) To encounter God is to keep on encountering a mystery, a loving mystery that wants only our growth.
III. Evolution of self A) A baby is born enough of a blank that it comes to know itself as someone concomitantly with knowing things. 1) Soon this little learner experiences her or his power, power over material creation: We all know the clutch of a tight little fist around a rattle! 2) Soon this little learner also experiences her or his power over people. A scream brings one of those faces into view, and a smile has them gurgling back at you. 3) A child experiences his or her value in experiencing his or her power, power to dominate over things and people. “I can make things happen!” B) Maturing comes, through all sorts of painful stages, with experiencing our value 1) Not as acquired through domination, but given. 2) Our friends and lovers reveal our very selves to us. 3) We find ourselves in their loving eyes and loving arms. 4) Their love is given, not dominated, forced, or acquired. C) We, at various stages in our life, can get hung up on the earlier quest for power: 1) To prove ourselves 2) To prove something 3) To be in control 4) To have something 5) To protect what is ours 6) To be deserving 7) To accomplish D) Jesus works throughout his life to free people from that infantile approach to establishing their own value. E) We are all desperate for signs that we are ok, that we're somebody, that we have value. F) We do it no longer with rattles, but with money, titles, accolades, homes, families, diplomas, clothes, corporate status, social groups.
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1) Some of us do it with brands: my computer, my car, my beer tells you and me who I am; it makes me somebody. My football team, my college, my political party: I am someone! 2) A satanic strategy in life is to fixate us on dominating, on needing to have for our identity (a) Things that are good in themselves (b) That are good to enjoy as gifts G) The temptation for us is, like the child, to scream "This is mine!" or just "Mine!" 1) The strategy moves on from “this is mine” to “look at me!” and finally to “I come first!” And once I know that I come first, I can be led to all sorts of vices. 2) If I come first, it is not hard—in fact it is natural and good—to cheat, to lie, to manipulate other people. H) Jesus, by contrast, offers his love and God’s love and invites people to find their value there. 1) Jesus takes up in his love the love of all those in whose eyes and arms we have found our value given. 2) He let himself be loved by Mary, Joseph, Lazarus, Peter, Mary Magdalene, Martha. I) And so he preached poverty of spirit. For him it is not that things are bad in themselves, but that we ask them to give us a definition, a self. Freedom of spirit is what we all need: 1) Where am I clutching to something for my self-definition? 2) Where are the good things of my life ceasing to be gifts of love 3) And becoming foundations on which I build a non-dependent self? J) If we translate this strategy of capture into contemporary terms, we can see that it’s about identity and security. 1) Far from being a wrong-minded denigration of things or people, it’s a humane invitation to find ourselves as loved rather than as having.
IV. Having A) This kind of having can never have enough. B) It ends up with our destruction of what we love and even ourselves. C) The security it seems to provide proves false. D) The things with which we surround and buffer ourselves take away our feelings. E) For the sake of security, we end up choosing sterility.
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F) Instead of having more and doing more, we are called to be ourselves, loved children of God. G) Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: “In the world to come I will not be asked, ‘Why weren’t you Moses?’ I will be asked, ‘Why weren’t you Sussja?’”
V. The struggle we face is the same one Jesus faced in the desert. A) The question is: “What do you live from?” 1) Is it the things you control like bread? 2) Or like the bigger and better barns of life? B) Jesus’ answer is that we live from every word of love that comes from a loving God. C) Jesus’ invitation to poverty of spirit is that we not depend on things to tell us who we are, but are free enough of that quest to hear the words of love that reveal our value. D) Jesus challenges people to find themselves not in what they clutch but in the love God offers. 1) The poor woman can find God even in her poverty. Given our condition, she has, for Jesus, an even better chance of finding God. She is open to receiving a loved identity more than is the rich woman. E) The immature quest to establish who we are by what we have and what we do has a natural consequence: we hope to impress people. F) Their admiration, their accolades, respect—so we hope—makes us someone. G) The lure of having and doing something to be someone is summed up in “this is mine!” H) The lure of impressing others is summed up in “look at me!” I) So the Satanic temptation to Jesus in the desert was to impress people by the miraculous, to win a following by leaping from the temple and being saved. The Satanic program in life is to capture us. J) We easily ask things that we control to give us our identity. K) What do I have that is mine, that makes me who I am, that is secure? 1) Possessions 2) Talents 3) Accomplishments 4) Power 5) Standing
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L) Facing the tough question of who we are, we can easily answer by stating what we have or what we have done. 1) But this kind of having can never have enough. 2) Widow and Hens (Konrad p. 92 Aesop): feeds them more; they stop laying at all. 3) The Sea-gull and the Kite: “A sea-gull, after trying to swallow a fish, burst his gullet and lay dead on the shore. A kite seeing him said, ‘You deserve what you have suffered, because, although you were born a winged creature, you tried to make your living on the sea.’” (Perry 139) M) The security it seems to provide proves false 1) Miser and Lump of Gold Fable
VI. The things with which we surround and buffer ourselves take away our feelings. A) For the sake of security, we end up choosing sterility B) We can use things to shield us from: 1) Vulnerability 2) Other people 3) Insecurity 4) God C) It goes back to adventure: 1) We fear we will lose what we have. 2) We fear that we will lose ourselves! 3) The Fox and the Mask: we fear that, when we look, we will find that there is nothing there. 4) Those who seek their lives will lose them. D) Lazarus and the man who didn't trade his talent 1) Jesus’ program proposes a kind of poverty where we can use things, enjoy them, accept them as gifts, but not be dependent on them to give us our identity. 2) Jesus frees us from sterilizing debilitating concern with our security: the “lilies of fields” image follows directly on “bigger and better barns” for a reason E) We start to get an inkling of what Jesus sees in poverty in a good fable by the Alsation Pfeffel: F) Bee and Butterfly (Konrad, p. 112) is great for "poverty. The bee takes the butterfly to her hive and shows all that she has stored up.
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1) Butterfly: “Nice, but I wouldn't change places with you.” 2) “How come? What on earth do you have?” 3) “You have a full house . . . and I have nothing to lose.”
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FABLES, PARABLES, AND PICTURES
Illustrations of The Fox and the Mask
THE WIDOW AND THE HEN (James 6)
A WIDOW woman kept a Hen that laid an egg every morning. Thought the woman to herself, “If I double my Hen's allowance of barley, she will lay twice a-day.” So she tried her plan, and the Hen became so fat and sleek, that she left off laying at all.
Figures are not always facts.
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80. THE GOOSE AND THE GOLDEN EGG Aesop for Children (1919) There was once a Countryman who possessed the most wonderful Goose you can imagine, for every day when he visited the nest, the Goose had laid a beautiful, glittering, golden egg.
The Countryman took the eggs to market and soon began to get rich. But it was not long before he grew impatient with the Goose because she gave him only a single golden egg a day. He was not getting rich fast enough.
Then one day, after he had finished counting his money, the idea came to him that he could get all the golden eggs at once by killing the Goose and cutting it open. But when the deed was done, not a single golden egg did he find, and his precious Goose was dead.
Those who have plenty want more and so lose all they have.
The Seagull and the Kite
A SEAGULL, who was more at home swimming on the sea than walking on the land, was in the habit of catching live fish for its food. One day, having bolted down too large a fish, it burst its deep gullet-bag, and lay down on the shore to die. A Kite, seeing him, and thinking him a land bird like itself, exclaimed: You richly deserve your fate; for a bird of the air has no business to seek its food from the sea.
Moral: Every man should be content to mind his own business.
Source: Aesop’s Fables, Copyright 1881. Translator: unknown. WM. L. Allison, New York Illustrator: Harrison Weir, John Tenniel, Ernest Griset, et.al.
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104. THE MISER Aesop for Children (1919)
A Miser had buried his gold in a secret place in his garden. Every day he went to the spot, dug up the treasure and counted it piece by piece to make sure it was all there. He made so many trips that a Thief, who had been observing him, guessed what it was the Miser had hidden, and one night quietly dug up the treasure and made off with it.
When the Miser discovered his loss, he was overcome with grief and despair. He groaned and cried and tore his hair.
A passerby heard his cries and asked what had happened.
“My gold! O my gold!” cried the Miser, wildly, “someone has robbed me!”
“Your gold! There in that hole? Why did you put it there? Why did you not keep it in the house where you could easily get it when you had to buy things?”
“Buy!” screamed the Miser angrily. “Why, I never touched the gold. I couldn't think of spending any of it.”
The stranger picked up a large stone and threw it into the hole.
“If that is the case,” he said, “cover up that stone. It is worth just as much to you as the treasure you lost!”
A possession is worth no more than the use we make of it.
Luke 12:16-21 Parable of the Rich Fool
Then he told them a parable. “There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?’ And he said, ‘This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’ Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God.”
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The Mice That Ate Iron Once upon a time, there was a rich merchant called Naduk. But times were bad and his business was suffering. He decided to leave the city and find his fortune in a new place. He sold off all his possessions and paid off his debts. All that he had left was a heavy iron beam. Naduk went to say goodbye to his friend Lakshman, and requested him to keep the beam for him till he returned. Lakshman promised to look after it for him. For many years, Naduk traveled far and wide, building his fortune. Luck was with him, for he became rich once again. He returned home and bought a new house and started his business again. He went to visit his friend Lakshman who greeted him warmly. After a while, Naduk asked him to return his beam. Lakshman knew that the beam would fetch him good money so he was loath to return it. So he told Naduk that he had kept his beam in the store-room and the mice ate it. Naduk did not seem to mind. He asked Lakshman to send his son home with him so that he could hand over a gift that he had bought for him. So Lakshman sent his son Ramu with Naduk. Naduk locked up Ramu in a cellar in his house. By nightfall, Lakshamn was worried and came to ask about the whereabouts of his son. Naduk replied that on the way to his house, a hawk swooped down and carried the boy off. Lakshman accused Naduk of lying. He insisted that a hawk could not carry off a fifteen-year-old boy. A big fight ensued and the matter was taken to court. When the magistrate heard Lakshman's side of the story, he ordered Naduk to return the boy to his father. But Naduk insisted that a hawk carried off the boy. The magistrate asked him how it was possible. He replied, that if a huge iron beam can be eaten by mice, then a boy could definitely be carried off by a hawk. Naduk related the whole story. Everyone in the courtroom burst out laughing. The magistrate then ordered Lakshman to return the iron beam to Naduk and that Naduk return Lakshman’s son to him. http://www.indiaparenting.com/stories/85_2272/the-mice-that-ate-iron.html
Luke 16: 19-31 (The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus)
“There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried, and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he cried out, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.’ Abraham replied, ‘My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented. Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.’ He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment.’ But Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’ He said, ‘Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ Then Abraham said, ‘If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.’”
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Have you known the kind of having that can never have enough?
2. People today stress finding security. How does a good Christian today look at being secure?
3. Prophetic voices in Christianity today like to suggest that our affluence buffers us from feeling the want and even deprivation of much of the world. Does that claim make sense to you?
4. Is it practical to try to live first and most deeply from God's love for us?
5. How should a good Christian look at her or his accomplishments?
6. Do you think that our friends and lovers reveal to us who we are?
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Conference 7: I’m Nobody! Are You Nobody Too?
I. “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” by Emily Dickinson A) I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! They’d advertise – you know! B) How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog! About: others’ opinions and humiliation
II. Regulated Sacrifice from Kalila and Dimna A) The lion is making life intolerable, and other animals gather and decide to offer a sacrificial victim a day. This is accepted and put into practice. B) After some time, it was an old hare’s turn; it was delayed; he arrived late to face the lion’s growling. He said he had been bringing his cousin as the day’s victim but they were detained by another lion who captured his cousin. 1) “I told him that my cousin belonged to you.” “Oh, I have heard of that cowardly wimp of a lion! What right has he to take away my food?” 2) Our lion roared: “What?! Where is he!” 3) The hare led him to a deep pit with clear water at the bottom. “Is he in there? “Oh, yes, I'll show him to you. Come here!” C) The hare made sure that he was standing right between our lion’s legs. D) “There he is, and there’s my cousin!” Our lion jumped in and drowned in a few minutes.
III. Review A) The immature quest to establish who we are by what we have and what we do has a natural consequence: we hope to impress people. Their admiration, their accolades, respect—so we hope —make us someone. B) The lure of impressing others = “Look at me!” C) The Satanic program in life is to capture us in D) Being “somebody” in others eyes means much to us! E) We can go crazy trying to win others’ affirmation.
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F) We lose ourselves in the process. G) Others’ opinions may not really touch us at all.
IV. Competition is a major way many of us seek to be somebody in others’ eyes. A) Recall the opening story of regulated sacrifice: competing with the supposed competitor lion brings our lion to his destruction. B) Recall the story of the dog and his piece of meat. 1) It is worth hearing again, this time in Milo Winter’s version. C) You'll remember Chanticleer in Chaucer’s “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale.” 1) The clever fox entices Chanticleer to outdo his father by stretching his neck and closing his eye. 2) In that moment he captures him. He carries him off with the whole farm chasing after. 3) Chanticleer suggests that the fox answer them back. That Chanticleer is now his. 4) That is just what the fox does, and in that moment Chanticleer is gone. 5) Two competitors outfox each other. D) Lessing has a funny fable about competition (Konrad p. 84): E) Wolf: “My wolf father had 200 enemies that he overcame. He had to lose sometime."” 1) Fox answers: “Actually, he overcame 200 sheep.” 2) “The first competition he lost was the first bull he took on!” F) For many of us, the honor that makes us somebody is the honor of winning. A loser is a nobody.
V. There is another form that this second step towards “being somebody in the eyes of others” can take. A) That is not to trust that I am loved and so to despise myself, to distrust myself, to accept an alien estimate of me as true, to sell myself out for someone else’s idea of me. B) Trying to please that someone or fulfill his/her expectations of me, I end up selling myself out. C) Like Nora in Ibsen's Doll House, I may feel like an adult who has no idea who she is. D) I think of that frog who turned out to taste just like chicken.
VI. Jesus’ answer: openness to humiliation A) As a satanic strategy leads from riches to honors, so Jesus’ strategy leads from poverty to humiliation.
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1) Ignatius, in framing this strategy, expected that good people growing in their spirituality would experience concrete humiliations. 2) He is talking about concrete experiences of being humiliated. (a) My expectation: humiliation will not happen to me. (b) My experience: humiliation happens. B) Humiliation will keep happening to those who are spiritually poor. 1) Poverty is vulnerable! 2) Accepting human insecurity makes us vulnerable. 3) Acknowledging our dependence on God and others makes us vulnerable. C) Those who are building their own security, who are somebodies, who are winning, who are dominating, can always laugh at us—and sometimes they will. D) Jesus’ strategy with its vulnerability and openness to humiliation is challenging. 1) For now, it can be hard to see where this strategy is going. 2) But trust that Ignatius and Jesus know what they are doing. E) Next conference: we will see the powerful result of humiliation. F) It is not for naught that Jesus ended up allowing himself to become a victim. 1) He fit the pattern! 2) We will be eternally surprised that the pattern of poverty, vulnerability, and humiliation fits us! 3) That pattern is that humiliation helps render us humble, 4) But Jesus’ kind of humility, we will see, is quite different from what our culture calls humility. G) Scripture of the landowner giving the same wage all day (Mt 20:1-16) 1) Are we envious while God is generous? 2) Can we find our identity in being loved by God and others without building an identity by comparison or approval or by reference to how we stand with others? H) Mercury and Statue Maker (Charles Robinson, 1912 Big Book of Fables), Perry 88
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FABLES, PARABLES, AND PICTURES
Lion and Hare (Panchatantra) ["Regulated Sacrifice"]
Various animals once lived in a delightful forest surrounded by many pleasant meadows. Bloody kills by a fierce and hungry lion, however, continually shattered the peace. Finally the surviving beasts held a meeting to discuss how they might organise themselves. They sent a delegation which cautiously approached the lion one morning with a compromise.
“Oh lion,” said the beast, an elderly and distinguished gazelle, “your appetite for flesh makes chaos of our lives. We tremble to think of your powerful jaws tearing at out throats. Such a perpetual state of anxiety is no way to live, and therefore we would like to propose the alternative concept of regulated sacrifice. Each of our families will offer up one of its members and daily we shall select by lottery one of them to become your food. Not only will this method save you much time in stalking and catching your prey, but also it will reintroduce some semblance of order into our lives. Some will be up for the chop, of course, but at least the rest of us can continue our lives in relative tranquility. In short, we will contract to feed you every day from our own flesh and blood.”
“I don’t object to the idea," said the lion, "but how do I know I can trust you to deliver?”
“A good question, Your Powerfulness, a good question, “replied the gazelle. “But you don't need to trust us at this stage. All you need to do is allow us time for a test: if we don't deliver as we promise, you can resume your former ways and kill us at random. You really have nothing to lose, O Mighty One.”
“Hmm,” said the lion. “All right, we'll try this regulated sacrifice plan of yours from this afternoon. Deliver me someone to eat by four o’clock. If it works, so much the better; but if it fails, be warned that I shall descend among you with terrible anger and kill at twice the rate of anything you’ve experienced so far.”
Thus it was that for many weeks the lion thrived under what became known as the RSP lottery. Of course, the other animals were saddened by the personal loss of any individual family member who was sacrificed; but they felt there was nothing they could do to improve the situation.
One day a certain hare won the lottery. It was by now customary for the sacrificial winner to spend a period of quiet and meditation in order to compose his or her mind before being escorted to the lion. After saying goodbyes to various weeping relatives and good friends, the hare sat apart for an hour or so. Then he addressed a few of the official lottery administrators as follows:
“I have a small final request to make of you that will in no way endanger anyone else. Please delay my escort to the lion by an hour or more in order that he will get hungry and wonder whether or not his food is coming. Then allow me to approach him alone, for I have a plan that may free us once and for all from the tyranny of this bully.”
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“Since you are to die in any case,” said a huge old boar, after conferring with his fellow administrators, “we see no reason to disallow your request. I cannot however, conceal from you that we are highly amused that a mere big-ears-and-cottontail presumes to believe himself a match for old Death Jaws himself. Still, any chance is better than none – good luck to you, my son!”
The hare tarried along the way until he was very late indeed. When at last he reached the lion's den, he called out in a meek and hesitant voice: “Oh, Mr. Lion ... Mr. Lion ... Where are you, sir?”
“I’m right here, you dolt,” the lion answered as he rushed out from behind a nearby tree. “Who the hell are you and what is the meaning of this intolerable delay? Where is my food?”
“It’s been stolen, sir, by another lion. I tried to stop him, but ...”
“What?” roared the lion. "”Stolen by another lion?”
“Yes, Sir. I was escorting my cousin to you for the four o’clock appointment when suddenly a rather unprepossessing member of your species attacked us and snatched up my cousin.
“‘Stop! Stop!’ I cried out. ‘You can’t do that. You’re taking the food of the lion who owns this territory.’
“‘Hah,’ he answered back in a most arrogant way. ‘And who’s going to stop me, you little flop-eared pipsqueak?’
“‘I’ll have to report you to the lion who is expecting the food you’ve stolen,’ I said. ‘I doubt he’ll be exactly pleased with your poaching.’
“‘Oh, yes, your mighty master,’ he says. ‘I’ve heard of him. Sits about all day and waits for his food to be delivered to him. Some kind of rough, tough lion that is! You just tell him for me that the prey belongs to the hunter. If he wants this tidbit back, he can come and claim it from me if he dares. Hah!
“‘Meanwhile, tell him I shall take whatever I want, whenever I want it from this area. He can have the leftovers if there are any, and consider himself lucky.’ With that he ran off into the forest with my cousin in his jaws.”
“Where is he?” spat the lion, rigid with rage, muscles quivering along his great back. “Where is this foul-mouthed interloper who steals my food?”
“I did follow him, sir. I know his hiding place. But I think it might be dangerous to approach him just now.”
“What?” the lion roared. “Dangerous, you say? Why, I’ll teach this mangy amateur a lesson he won’'t forget. Dangerous? Grrrr! Listen, you stupid twitch-nose: take me to him now! Or I’ll break your back so fast you won’t know what hit you. Now get moving!”
“Yes, sir,” said the hare in simulated terror. “If you insist, sir.”
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“I do!” roared the lion so loudly the hare was momentarily knocked off his feet.
The hare quickly scampered off into the forest. By and by he led the lion to a deep pit that he knew was partly filled with water. He paused near some bushes and clumps of grass that obscured its edge and whispered to the lion: “Please, sir, I'm afraid to go any closer alone. The other lion is hiding down a hole just ahead. Let me stay right next to you and I shall point him out.”
The lion nodded his assent and the two of them very quietly crept up to the pit's edge together. They were just coming through the greenery when the hare said urgently: “There, sir! There he is, and that’s my cousin!”
The lion stood up suddenly and gave a thunderous battle roar. Its echo shot back at him from the other side of the pit. The hare instantly scuttled in between the lion’s forelegs, and when the lion looked down into the pit, sure enough he saw another lion standing over a hare – his hare!
With all his strength he leaped to the attack. The hare flattened himself to the ground and the lion sailed over him to land with a terrific splash in the pit below.
It did not take the lion long to drown. Every time he loudly cursed the hare for his treachery, more water rushed down his throat. Soon he was spluttering and choking his life away. After a while the hare hopped home to tell all the other animals the good news.
• Extracted from The Hare and the Lion, copyright Ramsay Wood 2008, from Kalila and Dimna: Fables of Friendship and Betrayal (Saqi Books). Retold from Sanskrit by Ramsay Wood.
THE FOX AND THE RAVEN (Perry 124)
A story about a fox and a raven which urges us not to trust anyone who is trying to deceive us.
The raven seized a piece of cheese and carried his spoils up to his perch high in a tree. A fox came up and walked in circles around the raven, planning a trick. 'What is this?' cried the fox. 'O raven, the elegant proportions of your body are remarkable, and you have a complexion that is worthy of the king of the birds! If only you had a voice to match, then you would be first among the fowl!' The fox said these things to trick the raven and the raven fell for it: he let out a great squawk and dropped his cheese. By thus showing off his voice, the raven let go of his spoils. The fox then grabbed the cheese and said, 'O raven, you do have a voice, but no brains to go with it!'
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172. THE MILLER, HIS SON, AND THEIR ASS Vernon Jones (1912), illustrations by Arthur Rackham
A Miller, accompanied by his young Son, was driving his Ass to market in hopes of finding a purchaser for him.
On the road they met a troop of girls, laughing and talking, who exclaimed, “Did you ever see such a pair of fools? To be trudging along the dusty road when they might be riding!” The Miller thought there was sense in what they said; so he made his Son mount the Ass, and himself walked at the side.
Presently they met some of his old cronies, who greeted them and said, “You’ll spoil that Son of yours, letting him ride while you toil along on foot! Make him walk, young lazybones! It'll do him all the good in the world.”
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The Miller followed their advice, and took his Son's place on the back of the Ass while the boy trudged along behind. They had not gone far when they overtook a party of women and children, and the Miller heard them say, “What a selfish old man! He himself rides in comfort, but lets his poor little boy follow as best he can on his own legs!”
So he made his Son get up behind him. Further along the road they met some travellers, who asked the Miller whether the Ass he was riding was his own property, or a beast hired for the occasion.
He replied that it was his own, and that he was taking it to market to sell. “Good heavens!” said they, “with a load like that the poor beast will be so exhausted by the time he gets there that no one will look at him. Why, you’d do better to carry him!” “Anything to please you,” said the old man, “we can but try.” So they got off, tied the Ass’s legs together with a rope and slung him on a pole, and at last reached the town, carrying him between them. This was so absurd a sight that the people ran out in crowds to laugh at it, and chaffed the Father and Son unmercifully, some even calling them lunatics.
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They had then got to a bridge over the river, where the Ass, frightened by the noise and his unusual situation, kicked and struggled till he broke the ropes that bound him, and fell into the water and was drowned. Whereupon the unfortunate Miller, vexed and ashamed, made the best of his way home again, convinced that in trying to please all he had pleased none, and had lost his Ass into the bargain.
German Version
1. Miller & son lead their ass to the fair 2. Son walks while father rides
3. Son rides while father walks 4. Both father and son ride
5. Father and son support the ass 6. Father and son carry the ass on a pole
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THE FROG WHO WANTED TO BE A TRUE FROG (Augusto Monterroso, The Black Sheep and Other Fables 63-4)
There was once a Frog who wanted to be a True Frog, and every day she worked hard at it.
In the beginning she bought a mirror in which she studied herself long and carefully, anxiously searching for the Real Frog within.
At times it seemed to her that she had found it and at other times not, according to her mood of the day or hour, until she tired of it and put the mirror away in a trunk.
Finally she concluded that the only way to know her own value was to seek it in the opinion of others, and she began to preen and dress up and undress (when there was no other way) to discover whether others approved of her and recognized her as a True Frog.
One day she observed that what they regarded most highly was her figure, especially her legs, so she practiced deep-knee-bends and jumping to make her thighs even sightlier, and she was sure that they all admired her.
And so she went on striving until--anything to be considered a True Frog—she let them pull her legs off; and they ate them; and she lasted just long enough to hear with deep bitterness as they said, “What good Frog—just like Chicken.”
125. THE DOG AND HIS REFLECTION Aesop for Children (1919)
A Dog, to whom the butcher had thrown a bone, was hurrying home with his prize as fast as he could go. As he crossed a narrow footbridge, he happened to look down and saw himself reflected in the quiet water as if in a mirror. But the greedy Dog thought he saw a real Dog carrying a bone much bigger than his own.
If he had stopped to think he would have known better. But instead of thinking, he dropped his bone and sprang at the Dog in the river, only to find himself swimming for dear life to reach the shore. At last he managed to scramble out, and as he stood sadly thinking about the good bone he had lost, he realized what a stupid Dog he had been.
It is very foolish to be greedy.
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Matthew 20:1-16 (The Workers in the Vineyard)
“The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. Going out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just.’ So they went off. [And] he went out again around noon, and around three o’clock, and did likewise. Going out about five o’clock, he found others standing around, and said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They answered, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You too go into my vineyard.’ When it was evening the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Summon the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and ending with the first.’ When those who had started about five o’clock came, each received the usual daily wage. So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more, but each of them also got the usual wage. And on receiving it they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day’s burden and the heat.’ He said to one of them in reply, ‘My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? [Or] am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?’ Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
88. MERCURY AND THE SCULPTOR Vernon Jones (1912)
Mercury was very anxious to know in what estimation he was held by mankind; so he disguised himself as a man and walked into a Sculptor’s studio, where there were a number of statues finished and ready for sale. Seeing a statue of Jupiter among the rest, he inquired the price of it. “A crown,” said the Sculptor.
“Is that all?” said he, laughing; “and” (pointing to one of Juno) “how much is that one?”
“That,” was the reply, “is half a crown.”
“And how much might you be wanting for that one over there, now?” he continued, pointing to a statue of himself.
“That one?” said the Sculptor; “Oh, I'll throw him in for nothing if you’ll buy the other two.”
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Do you agree that we are tempted to be someone by saying in some form, “Look at me!”? Have you ever experienced other people seeming to act this way? Have you experienced yourself acting this way?
2. Have you had an experience of humiliation? What was it like?
3. Do you like to compete? Conversely, are you tempted to give yourself away to someone’s opinion to please that person or group?
4. What might Jesus be saying in that story of the workers who got the same wage for their different amounts of work (Mt 20:1-6)?
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Conference 8: Me First, It’s All About Me
I. We’ve been looking at Jesus’ strategy and the opposed Satanic strategy. A) The Satanic strategy 1) This Satanic strategy works from what Ignatius calls riches. 2) We are tempted to claim, “This is mine” as a way of establishing ourselves and being “someone.” (a) The bad news is that we trust things to give us an identity, and we become beholden to them. We have to have them. (b) And the truth is that we cannot rely on them. We are like the fool who trusted his bigger and better barns. 3) And when we look to things to give us our identity and security, they become a kind of buffer between us and people, an enveloping layer that shields us off from people’s pain. 4) We end up living in walled in compounds, whether physical or spiritual, and our security is so precarious that we can never have enough of things. B) Jesus’ strategy 1) To that urge Jesus opposes freedom from things, a freedom that lets us receive and enjoy whatever we have and does not have us being consumed by what we do not have. 2) Those in search of their identity, Jesus says, live not by bread alone or things alone but by the words of love that come from God, and from all those in whose eyes we find our value given. 3) Centuries of poems have talked about how fleeting this fame is: “Where are the snows of yesteryear? 4) Jesus invites to a poverty that leads to vulnerability. Instead of shielding ourselves from others with things, we open ourselves to their pain. 5) Instead of trying to win their approval, we set ourselves aside to ask what might be their need. 6) And what is the fruit of this process? C) Now, in this conference, we look at the next step: The Satanic strategy moves from security to honors to pride. 1) The satanic strategy takes the good things of life and the natural joy we have in being liked or admired and uses them to place a person in self-centered isolation.
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2) He or she has completed the agenda of Adam and Eve and is painfully like a god: above it all, oblivious to others. 3) Jesus’ strategy is directly opposed. He leads people through their independence of the things they enjoy and use through the painful experience of vulnerability and humiliation to humility. 4) Few things are as frequently misunderstood as Christian humility. (a) We have learned it as an “about me” comparative. (i) “No matter how smart you are, they is somewhere somebody smarter.” (b) Real Christian humility is not about comparing ourselves with others. It is a receptivity to the other and his or her gift, which may be his or her need. (c) We are receptive to that gift, precisely because we are not worried about our stake and what the other person is thinking. (d) About my stuff (e) About what the other person is thinking of me. 5) We’ll look soon at the upshot of this kind of humility.
II. Our tendency to be self-centered is so strong that fables have a field day with it! A) “ It’s all about me!” 1) The Coach and the Fly 2) Fox and Goat in the Well (Perry 9) 3) Two Wallets B) On the funnier side 1) Goat and hedgehog: “You should see yourself from behind!” (Dicke Grubmueller 64) 2) WL a la Bierce: “Sorry you see it so selfishly!” 3) Wolf to the lamb: “I am sorry that you see it so selfishly!” C) Our preoccupation with ourselves means regularly that we manipulate or victimize others. 1) The Fox Betrays the Ass (Perry 191) An ass and a fox entered into a pact of friendship with each other and went forth to hunt. When a lion confronted them and the fox saw what danger they were in, he went up to the lion and promised to deliver the ass into his hands if the lion would promise him his own safety. The lion promised to spare him, and the fox managed to lead the ass into the
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trap. Then the lion, seeing that the ass was unable to get away, first seized upon the fox and afterwards turned his attention to the ass. (H 326; Handford 14, 1'MI Q581.) D) Our perspective is often humorously egocentric 1) Dog who knows that prayer brings not mice but bones (Poppe 77-78) 2) Taken up with ourselves, we often look ridiculous to others, like the crow caught in the wool of a sheep. 3) The wolf whose big ears in the long shadows of sundown made him think he was a lion— until a lion tore him apart (Konrad p. 82). 4) Elephant and Pug (a) La Fontaine’s version: a cat from the elephant lets the rat know fast why elephants—and anything bigger than a rat—is more important than a rat.. (b) Krylov’s version (Konrad p. 83-4): The pug knows he can get away with barking at the elephant, because he knows that the elephant won’t waste his time with the pug. 5) Pfeffel’s story of the ass (Konrad, p. 69-70): “Thinking of oneself first and only”=”It’s all about me!” 6) Unforgiving servant
III. Jesus with children A) Not because a child is innocent, but because a child is a “nobody” and the epitome of receptivity. B) Around children Jesus is always speaking of receiving, and that is precisely what Christian humility is about. C) Luke 9:46-50 D) Matthew 18:1-5
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FABLES, PARABLES, AND PICTURES
THE COACH AND THE FLY Elizur Wright
UPON a sandy, uphill road; Which naked in the sunshine glowed, Six lusty horses drew a coach. Dames, monks, and invalids, its load, On foot, outside, at leisure bode. The team, all weary, stopped and blowed: Whereon there did a fly approach, And, with a vastly business air, Cheered up the horses with his buzz,— Now pricked them here, now pricked them there, As neatly as a jockey does,— And thought the while—he knew 'twas so— He made the team and carriage go,— : On carriage-pole sometimes alighting—: Or driver's nose—and biting. And when the whole did get in motion, Confirmed and settled in the notion, He took, himself, the total glory,— Flew back and forth in wondrous hurry, And, as he buzzed about the cattle, Seemed like a sergeant in a battle, The files and squadrons leading on To where the victory is won. Thus charged with all the commonweal, This single fly began to feel Responsibility too great, And cares, a grievous, crushing weight; And made complaint that none would aid The horses up the tedious hill— The monk his prayers at leisure said— Fine time to pray!—the dames, at will, Were singing songs—not greatly needed! Thus in their ears he sharply sang, And notes of indignation rang,— Notes, after all, not greatly heeded. Erelong the coach was on the top: Now, said the fly, my hearties, stop And breathe; --I've got you up the hill;— And, Messrs. Horses, let me say,
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I need not ask you if you will A proper compensation pay.
Thus certain ever-bustling noddies Are seen in every great affair; Important, swelling, busy-bodies, And bores 'tis easier to bear Than chase them from their needless care.
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73. THE FOX AND THE GOAT Aesop for Children (1919)
A Fox fell into a well, and though it was not very deep, he found that he could not get out again. After he had been in the well a long time, a thirsty Goat came by. The Goat thought the Fox had gone down to drink, and so he asked if the water was good.
“The finest in the whole country” said the crafty Fox, “jump in and try it. There is more than enough for both of us.”
The thirsty Goat immediately jumped in and began to drink. The Fox just as quickly jumped on the Goat’s back and leaped from the tip of the Goat’s horns out of the well.
The foolish Goat now saw what a plight he had got into, and begged the Fox to help him out. But the Fox was already on his way to the woods.
“If you had as much sense as you have beard, old fellow," he said as he ran, “you would have been more cautious about finding a way to get out again before you jumped in.”
Look before you leap.
THE TWO BAGS (V. S. Vernon Jones 73)
EVERY man carries Two Bags about with him, one in front and one behind, and both are packed full of faults. The Bag in front contains his neighbours’ faults, the one behind his own. Hence it is that men do not see their own faults, but never fail to see those of others.
174. THE LAMB CHASED BY A WOLF (V.S. Vernon Jones, 1912)
A Wolf was chasing a Lamb, which took refuge in a temple. The Wolf urged it to come out of the precincts, and said, “If you don't, the priest is sure to catch you and offer you up in sacrifice on the altar.” To which the Lamb replied, “Thanks, I think I'll stay where I am: I’d rather be sacrificed any day than be eaten up by a Wolf.”
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The Wolf And The Lamb (Ambrose Bierce)
A Lamb, pursued by a Wolf, fled into the temple. “The priest will catch you and sacrifice you,” said the Wolf, “if you remain there.”
“It is just as well to be sacrificed by the priest as to be eaten by you,” said the Lamb.
“My friend,” said the Wolf, “it pains me to see you considering so great a question from a purely selfish point of view. It is not just as well for me.”
18. THE ASS, THE FOX, AND THE LION V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
An Ass and a Fox went into partnership and sallied out to forage for food together. They hadn’t gone far before they saw a Lion coming their way, at which they were both dreadfully frightened. But the Fox thought he saw a way of saving his own skin, and went boldly up to the Lion and whispered in his ear, “I’ll manage that you shall get hold of the Ass without the trouble of stalking him, if you’ll promise to let me go free.” The Lion agreed to this, and the Fox then rejoined his companion and contrived before long to lead him by a hidden pit, which some hunter had dug as a trap for wild animals, and into which he fell. When the Lion saw that the Ass was safely caught and couldn't get away, it was to the Fox that he first turned his attention, and he soon finished him off, and then at his leisure proceeded to feast upon the Ass.
Betray a friend, and you'll often find you have ruined yourself.
30. THE BOYS AND THE FROGS Aesop for Children (1919)
Some Boys were playing one day at the edge of a pond in which lived a family of Frogs. The Boys amused themselves by throwing stones into the pond so as to make them skip on top of the water.
The stones were flying thick and fast and the Boys were enjoying themselves very much; but the poor Frogs in the pond were trembling with fear.
At last one of the Frogs, the oldest and bravest, put his head out of the water, and said, “Oh, please, dear children, stop your cruel play! Though it may be fun for you, it means death to us!”
Always stop to think whether your fun may not be the cause of another's unhappiness.
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264. THE ASS AND HIS FELLOW TRAVELER THE DOG
An ass and a dog were traveling together. They found a sealed letter lying on the ground, and the ass picked it up. He broke the seal, opened it, and read it while the dog listened. It happened to be about feed, that is, fodder and barley and bran. The dog was impatient while the ass read these details and said to him, “Skip a little of this, dear friend, and see if you find anything said specifically about meat and bones.” When the ass had read through the whole letter and found nothing the dog wanted, the dog said, “Throw it away, my friend. It’s no good at all.”
27. THE WOLF AND HIS SHADOW Aesop for Children (1919)
A Wolf left his lair one evening in fine spirits and an excellent appetite. As he ran, the setting sun cast his shadow far out on the ground, and it looked as if the wolf were a hundred times bigger than he really was.
“Why,” exclaimed the Wolf proudly, “see how big I am! Fancy me running away from a puny Lion! I'll show him who is fit to be king, he or I.”
Just then an immense shadow blotted him out entirely, and the next instant a Lion struck him down with a single blow.
Do not let your fancy make you forget realities. Illustration by Milo Winter. 29. THE RAT AND THE ELEPHANT Aesop for Children (1919)
A Rat was traveling along the King’s highway. He was a very proud Rat, considering his small size and the bad reputation all Rats have. As Mr. Rat walked along—he kept mostly to the ditch—he noticed a great commotion up the road, and soon a grand procession came in view. It was the King and his retinue. The King rode on a huge Elephant adorned with the most gorgeous trappings. With the King in his luxurious howdah were the royal Dog and Cat. A great crowd of people followed the procession. They were so taken up with admiration of the Elephant, that the Rat was not noticed. His pride was hurt.
“What fools!” he cried. “Look at me, and you will soon forget that clumsy Elephant! Is it his great size that makes your eyes pop out? Or is it his wrinkled hide? Why, I have eyes and ears and as many legs as he! I am of just as much importance, and”—
But just then the royal Cat spied him, and the next instant, the Rat knew he was not quite so important as an Elephant.
A resemblance to the great in some things does not make us great.
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Matthew 18: 23-25 The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. Then Peter approaching asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he had him put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.” Luke 9:46-50 An argument arose among the disciples about which of them was the greatest. Jesus realized the intention of their hearts and took a child and placed it by his side and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. For the one who is least among all of you is the one who is the greatest.”
Matthew 18:1-5 At that time the disciples approached Jesus and said, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.”
Ass Hauling Cartloads by Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel
One an ass was hauling foul dung through the streets. Everyone got as far away as they could from the smell. “How they honor me!” A few days later he was hauling lovely flowers; everyone came as close as they could to enjoy the aroma. “How they love me!”
(And in both cases he was wrong!)
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Have you been involved in an experience where a person, your own heart, or the event has said to you, “It’s not about you”?
2. What is your experience of people who seem to think that it is all about them?
3. Have you had an experience that has helped you to see that you are not the center of the world?
4. Do you agree with Fr. Carlson’s thesis that Christian humility is neither about comparing oneself with others nor about deprecating oneself?
5. What does Jesus’ urging that we become like a child mean to you?
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Conference 9: Whose Ox Is Getting Gored?
I. Arrogance and judgment A) Fable: Whose Ox Is Getting Gored? B) Ignatius describes a three-stage development in contrasting strategies: 1) Strategies of confinement, manipulation, and alienation on the one hand 2) And of liberation and peace on the other. C) I look in this conference at two outgrowths of self-centeredness that we can allow to grow at the heart of our life: arrogance and judgment
II. Arrogance A) We have all been hurt by arrogant people. B) Is it safe to say that we have all—at some point and in some way—been the person who in ignorant arrogance has hurt others? C) Arrogance puts a special emphasis on the isolation of the person closed up in a world of ego. D) I believe that I have been that person who in ignorant arrogance has hurt others. E) In a good phrase, “I needed to move beyond the illusion of self-containment!” F) Fables 1) The Gnat and the Bull: We saw this fable earlier. The bull is in his own world and will not even notice the gnat. How many bulls’ horns have we landed on, only to go unnoticed? 2) The Ass carrying the Image of a God (Perry 182): How easily we arrogate to ourselves respect and admiration that might really belong to our family, our school, our team? 3) Do you remember the donkey drawing carts of dung and flowers who saw people’s reactions entirely in terms of their reaction to him? When his load was dung, they backed away and he took it as reverence. When his load was flowers, they approached and he took it as affection. Of course he was wrong both times. 4) When we are arrogant, we are just like the dog in the manger: because of our arrogance, we leave nothing for the cattle even when we don’t need it or sometimes cannot even use it. 5) As we talk of arrogance, we can well recall one of the most famous fables, The Tortoise and Hare: it all starts with the hare’s arrogant boasting. In most versions, that boasting got to be just too much for the other animals, and the tortoise had the courage to challenge it.
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G) Scripture 1) Jesus at Nazareth (Luke 3) runs into this kind of arrogance. (a) His hometown folk want from him what they think is their due. (b) He outrages them further by proclaiming a salvation not limited to Jews. (c) The outrage is so serious that they want to destroy him for challenging their self-centered world and for challenging their judgment of Him. 2) Arrogance and judgment often go hand in hand.
III. Judgment A) A natural outcropping of our need for security and identity, and of its pinnacle in pride that says, “I come first.” 1) Can be a severe judgmentalism, especially towards other people. 2) Often it is probably just as much toward ourselves—and probably just as much toward God. B) My own hunch is that the three probably go together and change together: 1) When we point fingers at others, it may be because we fear fingers, including our own, pointed at us. 2) And we make God into the great finger-pointer, ready to chastise us for every shortcoming. 3) We see ourselves as “someone” if we are better than the other person. C) For many of us, judgment is one more way to compete well, to win, and so to be somebody. 1) We are back at the story of the Pharisee who has to put down the tax-collector. 2) We turn to judgment sometimes at least because we are frightened of being shown up for who we are. D) Jesus asks us to receive his judgment of us, which is the loving judgment of God, who loves us in the midst of our sins. E) We are invited to be that tax collector and to receive God's loving, merciful affirmation of who we are. F) The Oak and the Reeds: Notice the arrogant judgments the oak makes both about himself and about the reeds. Judging himself secure and safe, he judges that the reeds have been dealt an unjust fate. How small his perspective is! How wide of the mark!
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IV. Dealing with arrogance and judgment in Scripture: Jesus with Simon the Pharisee and the Sinful Woman (Luke 7:36-50) A) Jesus has come to Simon’s home. Simon has humiliated him in more than one way. There was no washing of the feet, no kiss, no anointing of Jesus’ head. Jesus has experienced and recognizes the humiliation. Simon is putting Jesus in his proper place. B) Jesus looks at Simon, probably in many ways a good fellow, and finds judgment. Simon is spending his energy judging this woman and judging Jesus for not judging her too. It is not hard to see that these judgments serve to confirm Simon’s riches, namely that he, by contrast with these people, is religious. C) It is also not hard, I believe, to look with Jesus’ eyes and see that this self-confirming process makes Simon small and in fact, in Ignatius’s' words, enchained in self-serving pride. Simon, in protecting himself from the threat that Jesus brings, misses the gift in both the woman and in Jesus. Simon’s self-centered judgments of both Jesus and this sinner woman keep him away from everything here that speaks of God, namely Jesus, this woman, and especially her love. D) Jesus, humiliated, is receptive to the great gifts she brings, her repentance and love, her heart. He, humiliated, can sense what Simon, proud, cannot. In short, Jesus can attend to the other. That means, first of all, that he, hurt, can attend to this hurt and weeping woman. It also means that he can attend to Simon in a way that might help him. E) His answer to Simon’s insults is not to fight back but rather to recognize the humiliation. He then can create a story that invites Simon to try a new viewpoint. Attending to Simon’s mentality, Jesus can create a comparison story about which of two debtors loves more. Then Jesus invites Simon to compare how he, Simon, had received Jesus and how this woman had. Jesus offers the Pharisee a chicken-and-egg conundrum that has kept Scripture scholars busy for centuries. But true to Simon’s mentality, Jesus makes his point in terms of what is much and what is little, giving the first measure, “much,” to the woman and inviting Simon to find himself in the contrasting “little.” F) Jesus tries to put what he can at this man’s service, and so he offers a pointed contrast between, on the one hand, a virtuous reach to another person by this woman with heart, and on the other the cold judgment by the proud Pharisee. G) In the final touch of attentiveness to others, Jesus senses that the woundedness of this woman's heart has to do with her sins, and so he assures her of forgiveness.
V. La Fontaine’s The Elephant and the Ape of Jupiter A) This fable takes us to the land of the elephants who receive an important visitor, Gill, the ape messenger of the high god Jupiter. B) Towards the end of this fine story, we hear from the mid-19th century of an “emmet” (ant) and “spire” (blade).
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FABLES, PARABLES, AND PICTURES
The Partial Judge (Dodsley 1761)
A Farmer came to a neighbouring lawyer, expressing great concern for an accident which he said had just happened. One of your oxen, continued he, has been gored by an unlucky bull of mine, and I should be glad to know how I am to make you reparation.
Thou art a very honest fellow, replyed the lawyer, and wilt not think it unreasonable that I expect one of thy oxen, in return.
It is no more than justice, quoth the farmer, to be sure; but what did I say?—I mistake—It is your bull that has killed one of my oxen.
Indeed! Says the lawyer, that alters the case: I must enquire into the affair, and if—
And if! said the farmer—the business I find would have been concluded without an if, had you been as ready to do justice to others, as to exact it from them.
(The injuries we do, and those we suffer, are seldom weighed in the same scales.)
208. THE ASS CARRYING THE IMAGE V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
A certain man put an Image on the back of his Ass to take it to one of the temples of the town. As they went along the road all the people they met uncovered and bowed their heads out of reverence for the Image; but the Ass thought they were doing it out of respect for himself, and began to give himself airs accordingly. At last he became so conceited that he imagined he could do as he liked, and, by way of protest against the load he was carrying, he came to a full stop and flatly declined to proceed any further. His driver, finding him so obstinate, hit him hard and long with his stick, saying the while, “Oh, you dunder-headed idiot, do you suppose it's come to this, that men pay worship to an Ass?”
Rude shocks await those who take to themselves the credit that is due to others.
72. THE DOG IN THE MANGER V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
A Dog was lying in a Manger on the hay which had been put there for the cattle, and when they came and tried to eat, he growled and snapped at them and wouldn't let them get at their food. “What a selfish beast," said one of them to his companions; “he can’t eat himself and yet he won't let those eat who can.”
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117.THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
A Hare was one day making fun of a Tortoise for being so slow upon his feet. “Wait a bit,” said the Tortoise; “I’ll run a race with you, and I'll wager that I win.” “Oh, well,” replied the Hare, who was much amused at the idea, “let’s try and see;” and it was soon agreed that the fox should set a course for them, and be the judge. When the time came both started off together, but the Hare was soon so far ahead that he thought he might as well have a rest: so down he lay and fell fast asleep. Meanwhile the Tortoise kept plodding on, and in time reached the goal. At last the Hare woke up with a start, and dashed on at his fastest, but only to find that the Tortoise had already won the race.
Slow and steady wins the race.
Illustration by Arthur Rackham.
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Luke 3 (The Rejection at Nazareth) He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also asked, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” He said to them, “Surely you will quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.’” And he said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephathp in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.” When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them and went away.
THE ELEPHANT AND THE APE OF JUPITER
'TWIXT elephant and beast of horned nose About precedence a dispute arose, Which they determined to decide by blows. The day was fixed, when came a messenger To say the ape of Jupiter Was swiftly earthward seen to bear His bright caduceus through the air. This monkey, named in history Gill, The elephant at once believed A high commission had received To witness, by his sovereign's will, The aforesaid battle fought. Uplifted by the glorious thought, The beast was prompt on Monsieur Gill to wait, But found him slow, in usual forms of state,
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His high credentials to present. The ape, however, ere he went, Bestowed a passing salutation. His excellency would have heard The subject matter of legation: But not a word! His fight, so far from stirring heaven,— The news was not received there, even! What difference sees the impartial sky Between an elephant and fly? Our monarch, doting on his object, Was forced himself to break the subject. My cousin Jupiter, said he, Will shortly, from his throne supreme, A most important combat see, For all his court a thrilling theme. What combat? said the ape, with serious face. Is't possible you should not know the case?— The elephant exclaimed—not know, dear sir, That Lord Rhinoceros disputes With me precedence of the brutes? That Elephantis is at war With savage hosts of Rhinocer? You know these realms, not void of fame? I joy to learn them now by name, Returned Sir Gill, for, first or last, No lisp of them has ever passed, Throughout our dome so blue and vast. Abashed, the elephant replied, What came you, then, to do?— Between two emmets to divide A spire of grass in two. We take of all a care; And, as to your affair, Before the gods, who view with equal eyes The small and great, it hath not chanced to rise.
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28. THE OAK AND THE REEDS
A Giant Oak stood near a brook in which grew some slender Reeds. When the wind blew, the great Oak stood proudly upright with its hundred arms uplifted to the sky. But the Reeds bowed low in the wind and sang a sad and mournful song.
“You have reason to complain,” said the Oak. “The slightest breeze that ruffles the surface of the water makes you bow your heads, while I, the mighty Oak, stand upright and firm before the howling tempest.”
“Do not worry about us,” replied the Reeds. “The winds do not harm us. We bow before them and so we do not break. You, in all your pride and strength, have so far resisted their blows. But the end is coming.”
As the Reeds spoke a great hurricane rushed out of the north. The Oak stood proudly and fought against the storm, while the yielding Reeds bowed low. The wind redoubled in fury, and all at once the great tree fell, torn up by the roots, and lay among the pitying Reeds.
Better to yield when it is folly to resist, than to resist stubbornly and be destroyed.
Luke 7:36-50 (Simon and the Sinful Woman)
A Pharisee invited him to dine with him, and he entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table. Now there was a sinful woman in the city who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee. Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment, she stood behind him at his feet weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Tell me, teacher,” he said. “Two people were in debt to a certain creditor; one owed five hundred days’ wages and the other owed fifty. Since they were unable to repay the debt, he forgave it for both. Which of them will love him more?” Simon said in reply, “The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven.” He said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet, but she has bathed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with ointment. So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The others at table said to themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” But he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. One of our fables presents an ass carrying the image of a god and imagining to himself the worship people are offering the image. What life situation do you think of when you hear this fable?
2. Luke’s account of Jesus returning home to Nazareth (Luke 4: 16-30) presents a sudden shift—from people acclaiming him to people turning against him. What happened?
3. We all have to make many judgments each day. Earlier conferences praised good judgments that arise out of discerning our experiences. When is a judgment destructive?
4. Does Jesus judge Simon the Pharisee in Luke 7:36-50?
5. Why would Simon have wanted to humiliate Jesus?
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Conference 10: Make Me a Channel of Your Peace
I. Disappointment, violence, and peace A) Fable: Avaricious and Envious B) Review the process 1) What is inside has to come out 2) We see egregious examples around us (a) But—hopefully in smaller ways—some of the same forces are often at work in us. (b) The satanic strategy, for all its efforts, runs into blocks. The security it desperately seeks is never solid, the props on which we build our identity are shaky, and we know we cannot protect ourselves from death. (c) The approbation we get from others is itself fleeting, and it remains external. Kings, princes, rulers, and CEOs are often the loneliest people. 3) When we live more arrogantly, we run into rebuffs that suggest that our world is small. 4) The Satanic strategy itself generates disappointment, frustration, and even violence. Of course, the self-destructive voice inside us will channel that energy into more security, victories, affirmations, and layers of self-protection, (a) The spectre of Charles Foster Kane’s lonely castle looms over the self-seeker. (b) What is inside wants to come out, and the internal frustration and disappointment breed a violence not at all from God. 5) Jesus’ strategy, by contrast, tames the demoniac in us, frees us for receptivity and service, rather than for frustration and violence. 6) The person of receptive humility is open to the next gift and the next need and has nothing to secure or prove. 7) He or she can listen to the disappointed, the enraged, and may even be able to guide those persons to peace. 8) The encouraging camp of Jesus is a sunny, peaceful plain. That contrasts with the dark, smoky pit of Satanic goading.
II. Fables A) Fables know frustration. 1) We saw earlier the frustration of the fox not admitting that he had wanted the grapes.
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(a) As he departs, will his denial trigger frustration since he has not acknowledged or dealt with his desire? (b) Will he be ready to find an outlet for that frustrated energy of leaping at the grapes? (c) His road to peace lies in transparency. B) Fables will sometimes show a strange outbreak of violence. 1) The Lion and the Frog (Croxall) C) Fables know how easily our disappointment can turn to cynicism. 1) We saw earlier the story of The Cormorant and the Stars: deceived once, he gave up forever on fishing. D) One classic fable dramatizes the conflict between frustrated force and creative gentleness. 1) The North Wind and the Sun: violence is not the only way. 2) The sun’s gentle way is creative, peaceful, engaging, life-giving. E) But fables also know optimism. 1) From earlier: The Hall of a 1000 Mirrors: optimism, yes, but one founded in receptivity and not in some sort of rose-colored denial of what is there.
III. Violence A) Where does our violence come from and how can we deal with it? B) Scripture 1) Story of the vineyard owner who finally sends his son (Matthew 21:33-41) 2) Old testament image for Israel 3) Jesus’ late encounters with Jerusalem religious authorities 4) Strange thinking about seizing the inheritance C) Jesus’ way: 1) Gentle in the midst of violence 2) Plunged into the waters of life 3) Images of a God who is greater than our conscience, greater than our hearts: able to create peace when we get envious, frustrated, and violent D) A striking story of the eruption of our violence: Avaricious and Envious 1) The root of the violence here lies in the very envy with which we started.
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2) We become more by violently reducing the other to less. 3) We are willing to maim ourselves to come out on top. E) Another classic fable tells of the recurrent human cycle: The Dog and His Shadow 1) Wanting, losing, and ultimately ending up frustrated F) The Wolf and the Lamb 1) The wolf is violent by nature but we become that way by trying to live at the center of the universe: 2) Zimler: Reasons are what we tell others in order to deceive ourselves G) The wolf in mirror (title-page of Charles Bennett’s The Fables of Aesop, 1857)
IV. How does Jesus deal with this violence and its sources? A) Woman taken in adultery: creative love in the midst of judgment and violence. 1) The scene thrust upon Jesus is the scene he came into as a human being. Ignatius’ incarnation contemplation: see how they wound, kill, and go down to hell. 2) The rocks of judgment in these men’s hands reveal well the state of their hearts: hard and jagged. They may well have felt that way not only about this woman but about God and about themselves. Would the last thought of her desperate life be a black judgment upon them as more despicable than she? 3) This scene of shame, confusion, guilt, and judgment is not Jesus’ creation, but he takes it on with heart and head. He alone does not work from judgment but rather from compassion, solidarity, receptivity to what is before him, a willingness to listen and to labor for others. 4) He finds a way to love these not very lovable men—to help and serve them. He saves them from the killing they had in mind and sets them on their way with a new question, far more life-giving than the trap question they had set for him. 5) He finds a way to give this desperate woman life, including encouragement to try other ways of finding life in the future. He gives her the honest sense that someone cares whether she lives or dies. At this moment, she turns the bent body on the ground waiting for the first stone to hit. Now she looks to Jesus—as we are invited to look—for the definition of her life. B) Peace 1) The humble person is open to other people, virtues, and invitations. 2) Humility is thus a gateway to all the other virtues and to peace. 3) The humble person knows that life is about receiving, changing, growing, adventuring, and being vulnerable and ready to leave some things behind.
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4) The woman becomes a channel of peace, as Franciscan spirituality has proclaimed so long and well: (a) Lord, make me a channel of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. Where there is sadness, joy. (b) O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
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FABLES, PARABLES, AND IMAGES
Avaricious and Envious (Joseph Jacobs 54, Aesop’s Fables; Perry 580)
Two neighbours came before Jupiter and prayed him to grant their hearts’ desire. Now the one was full of avarice, and the other eaten up with envy. So to punish them both, Jupiter granted that each might have whatever he wished for himself, but only on condition that his neighbour had twice as much. The Avaricious man prayed to have a room full of gold. No sooner said than done; but all his joy was turned to grief when he found that his neighbour had two rooms full of the precious metal. Then came the turn of the Envious man, who could not bear to think that his neighbour had any joy at all. So he prayed that he might have one of his own eyes put out, by which means his companion would become totally blind.
Vices are their own punishment.
Illustrations by Richard Heighway, 1894.
The Lion and the Frog (Samuel Croxall 1722, Fab. LXXXII)
The Lion hearing an odd kind of a hollow voice, and seeing nobody, started up; he listened again, and perceiving the voice to continue, even trembled and quaked for fear. At last, seeing a Frog crawl out of the lake and finding that the noise he had heard was nothing but the croaking of that little creature, he went up to it, and partly out of anger, partly contempt, spurned it to pieces with his feet.
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141. THE NORTH WIND AND THE SUN Aesop for Children (1919)
The North Wind and the Sun had a quarrel about which of them was the stronger. While they were disputing with much heat and bluster, a Traveler passed along the road wrapped in a cloak.
“Let us agree,” said the Sun, “that he is the stronger who can strip that Traveler of his cloak.”
“Very well,” growled the North Wind, and at once sent a cold, howling blast against the Traveler.
With the first gust of wind the ends of the cloak whipped about the Traveler’s body. But he immediately wrapped it closely around him, and the harder the Wind blew, the tighter he held it to him. The North Wind tore angrily at the cloak, but all his efforts were in vain.
Then the Sun began to shine. At first his beams were gentle, and in the pleasant warmth after the bitter cold of the North Wind, the Traveler unfastened his cloak and let it hang loosely from his shoulders. The Sun's rays grew warmer and warmer. The man took off his cap and mopped his brow. At last he became so heated that he pulled off his cloak, and, to escape the blazing sunshine, threw himself down in the welcome shade of a tree by the roadside.
Gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail.
Illustrations by Milo Winter.
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Matthew 21:33-41 (The Parable of the Tenants)
Hear another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey. When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce. But the tenants seized the servants and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned. Again he sent other servants, more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way. Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and acquire his inheritance.’ They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?” They answered him, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.” Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the scriptures:
‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes’?
Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit. The one who falls on this stone will be dashed to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they knew that he was speaking about them. And although they were attempting to arrest him, they feared the crowds, for they regarded him as a prophet. “The Wolf in the Mirror,” Illustration from The Fables of Aesop by Charles H. Bennett
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Why would the envious man ask to let one of his own eyes be plucked out?
2. If you were Satan, what strategy would you employ to bring down human beings?
3. When the lion found out that the source of the frightening booming sound was just a frog, he crushed the frog. Why?
4. Contrast the character of the sun and the north wind in the fable that pits them against each other.
5. What were the vineyard tenants thinking when they killed the son?
6. Jesus stops the violence of the men against the woman taken in adultery. Does his action set a pattern for what we can do against violence and frustration?
7. What feeling would you have if you were the cobbler returning the money to the financier?
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Conference 11: He Ran Then, and He Is Still Running Now: Freedom from and Freedom For
I. Freedom From: Fables A) The House Dog and the Wolf B) Fables tell lots of stories about freedom. C) Some interpreters see the genre as having a strong tie with the slave and the repressed, starting with Aesop in Greece and Phaedrus in Rome. D) Listen to some stories about freedom. 1) We just heard a story about the wolf preserving his freedom. (a) La Fontaine writes of this wolf that, as soon as he understood that he sometimes would have to wear a collar, he started running, and “he is still running now.” 2) There are stories of freedom unwittingly sacrificed: The Horse, Hunter, and Stag 3) There are stories of those who could not free themselves from fear: The Eagle, the Wild Sow, and the Cat (La Fontaine) 4) And those who could: The Hares and the Frogs 5) Some people try unsuccessfully to get rid of their restraints (a) The Mistress and Her Servants, in which the overworked maidservants killed the cock that was their alarm. Free from his wakeup calls, they faced the earlier calls of their harsh taskmistress. (b) One beast of labor asks if he will be freer after his master is attacked: Mule and master: will they make me carry more? Then who cares! (La Fontaine 6.8) 6) Some birds are no longer free to fly, as we saw in the story of the crow who thought he was an eagle and tried to lift a large sheep, only to become entangled and caught. 7) We see someone who is free of the need to please others and who can laugh at himself: the bald knight/huntsman 8) Some have learned to resist alluring temptation, as we saw in the fourth conference on learning in the school of hard knocks. The shepherd had experienced the sea’s changing moods and knew that the beckoning sea only wanted more of his money or goods. 9) We have seen others who only with labor can free themselves from the need to please others. Remember the Miller and his son bringing their ass to market and getting free advice at every step of the way.
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10) Some are not free to change their course: the boy on the wild horse (Perry 457) 11) Some are literally tied to their destruction, as we saw in the case of the poor mouse and the malicious frog. To the frog’s chagrin, his attempts to drown the mouse succeeded but succeeded too in getting him caught by the hawk overhead (The Mouse and the Frog). 12) Another could not free himself from the need to be acclaimed by others: The Tortoise and the Ducks E) These fine stories tend to be stories about freedom FROM: 1) Restraint, like a collar or a bit in one’s mouth 2) Fear 3) Work 4) The need to please others or to be acclaimed by them 5) Temptation 6) Deadly destruction, whether a fast horse or a malicious frog
II. Gospel stories: Different in that they tend to be stories not only of FREEDOM FROM but also of FREEDOM FOR A) The freedom we’re after in today’s spirituality includes: 1) The freedom to be loved 2) The freedom to encounter God 3) Finding our identity in God’s love and the love of many others. B) We crave the freedom to: 1) Relate to others, 2) Listen to them, 3) Be grateful for their gifts 4) Be ready to serve their needs C) There is a rich variety of scriptural stories we could consider of people freed: 1) Zacchaeus, freed to share his goods and to serve other people (Luke 19) 2) The daughter of Jairus and the woman with a flow of blood, both freed to live productive lives (Luke 8) 3) The woman bent over, freed to enjoy her dignity as a daughter of Abraham (Luke 13)
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4) I invite us to linger over one story: Gerasene Demoniac freed to live a humane, peaceful life. Mark 5:1-20
III. The Gerasene Demoniac A) We have been watching so many ways in which we can get entangled, lose our way, and get caught up in securing ourselves and trying to make a name for ourselves. B) We might want to take this peaceful man as a counter-symbol of what Gospel spirituality can do for us as we live in the middle of an often frantic world. C) Starting with the same gratitude that this man had for his being saved, we can find peace and a new vocation in our baptism. D) We have had some of his same experiences of the forces of death and self-destruction; each of us can detail all too well the tombs we have lived among, the chains that have fettered us, and the rocks we have used to gash others and ourselves. E) But the peace Jesus gives offers an answer to those earlier deathly scenes. He tames the demonic in us and gives us back to ourselves. F) If you can enjoy an imaginative prayer putting yourself into the scene, why not let Jesus rest a loving hand on your shoulder as you sit peacefully beside him on that hillside?
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FABLES, PARABLES, AND IMAGES
105. THE WOLF AND THE HOUSE DOG
There was once a Wolf who got very little to eat because the Dogs of the village were so wide awake and watchful. He was really nothing but skin and bones, and it made him very downhearted to think of it. One night this Wolf happened to fall in with a fine fat House Dog who had wandered a little too far from home. The Wolf would gladly have eaten him then and there, but the House Dog looked strong enough to leave his marks should he try it. So the Wolf spoke very humbly to the Dog, complimenting him on his fine appearance. “You can be as well-fed as I am if you want to,” replied the Dog. “Leave the woods; there you live miserably. Why, you have to fight hard for every bite you get. Follow my example and you will get along beautifully.” “What must I do?” asked the Wolf. “Hardly anything,” answered the House Dog. “Chase people who carry canes, bark at beggars, and fawn on the people of the house. In return you will get tidbits of every kind, chicken bones, choice bits of meat, sugar, cake, and much more beside, not to speak of kind words and caresses.” The Wolf had such a beautiful vision of his coming happiness that he almost wept. But just then he noticed that the hair on the Dog's neck was worn and the skin was chafed. “What is that on your neck?” “Nothing at all,” replied the Dog. “What! nothing!” “Oh, just a trifle!” “But please tell me.” “Perhaps you see the mark of the collar to which my chain is fastened.” “What! A chain!” cried the Wolf. "Don’t you go wherever you please?” “Not always! But what’s the difference?” replied the Dog. “All the difference in the world! I don’t care a rap for your feasts and I wouldn’t take all the tender young lambs in the world at that price.” And away ran the Wolf to the woods. There is nothing worth so much as liberty.
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The Horse, Hunter, and Stag (Joseph Jacobs 32, Aesop’s Fables; Perry 269)
A quarrel had arisen between the Horse and the Stag, so the Horse came to a Hunter to ask his help to take revenge on the Stag. The Hunter agreed, but said: “If you desire to conquer the Stag, you must permit me to place this piece of iron between your jaws, so that I may guide you with these reins, and allow this saddle to be placed upon your back so that I may keep steady upon you as we follow after the enemy.” The Horse agreed to the conditions, and the Hunter soon saddled and bridled him. Then with the aid of the Hunter the Horse soon overcame the Stag, and said to the Hunter: “Now, get off, and remove those things from my mouth and back.”
“Not so fast, friend,” said the Hunter. "I have now got you under bit and spur, and prefer to keep you as you are at present.”
If you allow men to use you for your own purposes, they will use you for theirs.
Illustration by Walter Crane
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16. Horse and Man (Perry 269) Baby’s Own Aesop (1887); Perry 269
When the Horse first took Man on his back, To help him the Stag to attack, How little his dread, As the enemy fled, Man would make him his slave and his hack. ADVANTAGES MAY BE DEARLY BOUGHT
THE EAGLE, THE WILD SOW, AND THE CAT (La Fontaine, Trans. by Elizur Wright)
A CERTAIN hollow tree Was tenanted by three. An eagle held a lofty bough, The hollow root a wild wood sow, A female cat between the two. All busy with maternal labors, They lived awhile obliging neighbors. At last the cat's deceitful tongue Broke up the peace of old and young. Up climbing to the eagle’'s nest, She said, with whiskered lips compressed, Our death, or, what as much we mothers fear, That of our helpless offspring dear, Is surely drawing near. Beneath our feet, see you not how Destruction's plotted by the sow? Her constant digging, soon or late, Our proud old castle will uproot. And then—O, sad and shocking fate!— She'll eat our young ones as the fruit! Were there but hope of saving one, ‘Twould soothe somewhat my bitter moan. Thus leaving apprehensions hideous, Down went the puss perfidious To where the sow, no longer digging, Was in the very act of pigging. Good friend and neighbor, whispered she, I warn you on your guard to be. Your pigs should you but leave a minute, This eagle here will seize them in it. Speak not of this, I beg, at all, Lest on my head her wrath should fall.
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Another breast with fear inspired, With fiendish joy the cat retired. The eagle ventured no egress To feed her young, the sow still less. Fools they, to think that any curse Than ghastly famine could be worse! Both staid at home, resolved and obstinate, To save their young ones from impending fate,— The royal bird for fear of mine, For fear of royal claws the swine. All died, at length, with hunger, The older and the younger; There staid, of eagle race or boar, Not one this side of death’s dread door;— A sad misfortune, which The wicked cats made rich.
(O, what is there of hellish plot The treacherous tongue dares not! Of all the ills Pandora's box outpoured, Deceit, I think, is most to be abhorred.)
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47. THE HARES AND THE FROGS Aesop for Children (1919) Hares, as you know, are very timid. The least shadow, sends them scurrying in fright to a hiding place. Once they decided to die rather than live in such misery. But while they were debating how best to meet death, they thought they heard a noise and in a flash were scampering off to the warren. On the way they passed a pond where a family of Frogs was sitting among the reeds on the bank. In an instant the startled Frogs were seeking safety in the mud.
“Look,” cried a Hare, “things are not so bad after all, for here are creatures who are even afraid of us!”
However unfortunate we may think we are there is always someone worse off than ourselves.
Illustration by Milo Winter. THE OLD MAN AND THE ASS (La Fontaine 6.8; Wright 1843)
AN old man, riding on his ass, Had found a spot of thrifty grass, And there turned loose his weary beast. Old Grizzle, pleased with such a feast, Flung up his heels, and capered round, Then rolled and rubbed upon the ground, And frisked, and browsed, and brayed, And many a clean spot made. Armed men came on them as he fed: Let's fly, in haste the old man said. And wherefore so? the ass replied. With heavier burdens will they ride? No, said the man, already started. Then, cried the ass, as he departed, I'll stay, and be—no matter whose; Save you yourself, and leave me loose. But let me tell you, ere you go, (I speak plain French, you know,) My master is my only foe.
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193. THE BALD HUNTSMAN V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
A Man who had lost all his hair took to wearing a wig, and one day he went out hunting. It was blowing rather hard at the time, and he hadn't gone far before a gust of wind caught his hat and carried it off, and his wig too, much to the amusement of the hunt. But he quite entered into the joke, and said, “Ah, well! the hair that wig is made of didn't stick to the head on which it grew; so it's no wonder it won't stick to mine.”
Illustration by Bewick
123. THE HORSE AND HIS RIDER V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
A Young Man, who fancied himself something of a horseman, mounted a Horse which had not been properly broken in, and was exceedingly difficult to control. No sooner did the Horse feel his weight in the saddle than he bolted, and nothing would stop him. A friend of the Rider’s met him in the road in his headlong career, and called out, “Where are you off to in such a hurry?” To which he, pointing to the Horse, replied, “I’ve no idea: ask him.”
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2. THE TORTOISE AND THE DUCKS Aesop for Children, 1919
The Tortoise, you know, carries his house on his back. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot leave home. They say that Jupiter punished him so, because he was such a lazy stay-at-home that he would not go to Jupiter's wedding, even when especially invited.
After many years, Tortoise began to wish he had gone to that wedding. When he saw how gaily the birds flew about and how the Hare and the Chipmunk and all the other animals ran nimbly by, always eager to see everything there was to be seen, the Tortoise felt very sad and discontented. He wanted to see the world too, and there he was with a house on his back and little short legs that could hardly drag him along.
One day he met a pair of Ducks and told them all his trouble.
“We can help you to see the world,” said the Ducks. “Take hold of this stick with your teeth and we will carry you far up in the air where you can see the whole countryside. But keep quiet or you will be sorry.”
The Tortoise was very glad indeed. He seized the stick firmly with his teeth, the two Ducks took hold of it one at each end, and away they sailed up toward the clouds.
Just then a Crow flew by. He was very much astonished at the strange sight and cried:
“This must surely be the King of Tortoises!”
“Why certainly——“ began the Tortoise.
But as he opened his mouth to say these foolish words he lost his hold on the stick, and down he fell to the ground, where he was dashed to pieces on a rock.
Foolish curiosity and vanity often lead to misfortune.
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Mark 5:1-20 The Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac.
They came to the other side of the sea, to the territory of the Gerasenes. When he got out of the boat, at once a man from the tombs who had an unclean spirit met him. The man had been dwelling among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any longer, even with a chain. In fact, he had frequently been bound with shackles and chains, but the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles smashed, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the hillsides he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones. Catching sight of Jesus from a distance, he ran up and prostrated himself before him, crying out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me!” (He had been saying to him, “Unclean spirit, come out of the man!”) He asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “Legion is my name. There are many of us.” And he pleaded earnestly with him not to drive them away from that territory.
Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside. And they pleaded with him, “Send us into the swine. Let us enter them.” And he let them, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine. The herd of about two thousand rushed down a steep bank into the sea, where they were drowned. The swineherds ran away and reported the incident in the town and throughout the countryside. And people came out to see what had happened. As they approached Jesus, they caught sight of the man who had been possessed by Legion, sitting there clothed and in his right mind. And they were seized with fear. Those who witnessed the incident explained to them what had happened to the possessed man and to the swine. Then they began to beg him to leave their district. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed pleaded to remain with him. But he would not permit him but told him instead, “Go home to your family and announce to them all that the Lord in his pity has done for you.” Then the man went off and began to proclaim in the Decapolis what Jesus had done for him; and all were amazed.
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Why do you think La Fontaine says not only that the wolf ran away from the dog but also that “he is still running now”?
2. Which fable of fear is closest to your experience these days?
3. Put yourself in the entourage of the knight whose wig suddenly is blown away. How do you react when he laughs and quips that it didn't stay on its first owner's head either?
4. Now be the knight: How do you usually react when your wig gets blown away in public?
5. Let yourself be the Gerasene demoniac. What was it like living among the rocks and tombs?
6. And what is it like now being at Jesus’ side?
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Conference 12: What Western Fables Do Not Stress
I. Fables vs. Gospel stories A) Fables: The Lion and the Fox B) We saw last time that Gospel stories coincide with fables in talking a great deal about freedom. 1) Where fables tended to concentrate on “freedom from,” Gospel stories added a strong dimension of “freedom for.” 2) Freedom for greater life, for sharing and enjoying, for service, for community C) Let's extend that inquiry and ask: What do our fables not reveal so well? 1) Humility 2) Service 3) Love without any sense of reward.
II. Humility A) All those competitive, comparative fables: one animal outdoes another and then proclaims his or her victory. 1) Like the crane vs. the peacock 2) The fox against the leopard B) This is unlike the Christian sense of humility—the receptivity to the gift of the other. C) In fact, the fable world is not easy. To open our eyes, fables generally underscore how all of us creatures can be wolves to each other. 1) One good example is The Wolf and the Crane 2) Luther: “Die Welt lohnt nicht anders denn mit Undank.” 3) Take a fellow off his cross, and he will happily put you onto it. Don’t expect thanks! D) The fable world tends to think in terms of competition rather than of humility.
III. Service A) The few fables that touch on service have a quite specific bent. B) There are several complaints about poor service, as in the story of the horse and his groom. C) Similarly, there is the funny story of the woman who entrusted her weak eyes to the care of a doctor.
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D) Other fables get into more serious but often unhappy service relationships. 1) We have seen a dog that serves a family, but the wolf flees to maintain his freedom. 2) We have seen a horse try to outdo his opponent the stag. Unsuspecting, he enlists the help of a man by letting him on his back, only to discover that he has now become the man’s servant. 3) We have encountered an ass who, when his master was under attack, cared only if these potential future masters would give him greater burdens than his present master. E) Any sense of wanting to be at the disposal of another for his or her good seems lacking here. Jesus’ repeated challenges upholding service represent a strong contrast to the fables. F) Note for example the sense of serving love in Luke’s parable of the prodigal son’s father. 1) This father works with both children, meets them where they are, protects the younger from hostile townsfolk, and labors to help both find life, even facing his own failure up to this point to communicate that successfully to them. 2) He goes to each to be at the disposal of each. 3) This is something new and different.
IV. Love without any sense of reward: A) There are highly “positive” fables, and we tend to remember them most of all. 1) The Ant and the Dove 2) The Lion and the Mouse similarly shows one animal helping another out of gratitude for the help already received. 3) An eagle helps a farmer because the farmer helped the eagle by removing his cap. 4) Androcles and Lion (563) B) More frequently, though, we see the refusal to help another, 1) The Horse and the Loaded Ass 2) The horizon of love here seems to be mutual advantage. It seldom if ever moves out to consider only the good of the other. 3) Rare exception: Lessing’s Zeus and the Sheep’s Complaint. (a) The sheep rejects every aggressive feature that Zeus can suggest. (b) In the end, the sheep declares, “It’s better to experience injustice than to do it.”
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C) More powerful: Jatakas tales (Indian tales telling of the many incarnations or birth stories of the Buddha) 1) One good example is that of the Banyan Deer King whose herd has made an offer to give a sacrificial victim daily to the human King. When it comes the turn for a doe with a young fawn to offer herself, she pleads with the Banyan Deer King. He offers himself in her stead, and by doing so occasions the conversion of the human king, who will not ask any longer for a sacrificial deer. D) Another example has an elephant giving part of his tusks to a human who turns out to be greedy and comes back for more of the tusks and then for all of the tusks. Each time the elephant gives, even once he recognizes the greediness of his asker.
V. These conferences have highlighted some challenging invitations Christians experience. A) We have seen a godlike generosity that calls to our gratitude and generosity. B) We have seen Jesus’ strategy is to bring us, through poverty of spirit and openness to experiences of humiliation, to a humility that is other-centered and receptive to people’s gifts and needs. Humility, service, and a love not seeking rewards are at the center of Jesus’ invitations. C) It is a nice confirmation, then, that these are invitations that fable-makers generally do not think of. D) Jesus remains counter-cultural and inviting and challenging. E) The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) 1) Humbly receptive to the other’s need 2) Serves him generously 3) Seeks no reward for his loving care 4) There is a sense here of receptivity, of relationship to the other, of service: they go together. 5) Early Christians saw Jesus as the good Samaritan who has found us half-dead, has knelt down to heal our wounds, has carried us back to life, and who keeps on caring for us. 6) We are back to where we started: We are grateful for existing at all, but even more grateful for God’s gracious intervention in our life. 7) What gracious love!
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FABLES, PARABLES, AND IMAGES
114. THE LIONESS AND THE VIXEN V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
A Lioness and a Vixen were talking together about their young, as mothers will, and saying how healthy and well-grown they were, and what beautiful coats they had, and how they were the image of their parents. “My litter of cubs is a joy to see,” said the Fox; and then she added, rather maliciously, “But I notice you never have more than one.”
“No,” said the Lioness grimly, “but that one’s a lion.”
Quality, not quantity.
76. THE PEACOCK AND THE CRANE Aesop for Children (1919)
A Peacock, puffed up with vanity, met a Crane one day, and to impress him spread his gorgeous tail in the Sun.
“Look,” he said. “What have you to compare with this? I am dressed in all the glory of the rainbow, while your feathers are gray as dust!”
The Crane spread his broad wings and flew up toward the sun.
“Follow me if you can,” he said. But the Peacock stood where he was among the birds of the barnyard, while the Crane soared in freedom far up into the blue sky.
The useful is of much more importance and value, than the ornamental.
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257. THE FOX AND THE LEOPARD V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
A Fox and a Leopard were disputing about their looks, and each claimed to be the more handsome of the two. The Leopard said, “Look at my smart coat; you have nothing to match that.” But the Fox replied, “Your coat may be smart, but my wits are smarter still.”
134. THE WOLF AND THE CRANE V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
A Wolf once got a bone stuck in his throat. So he went to a Crane and begged her to put her long bill down his throat and pull it out. “I'll make it worth your while,” he added.
The Crane did as she was asked, and got the bone out quite easily. The Wolf thanked her warmly, and was just turning away, when she cried, “What about that fee of mine?”
“Well, what about it?” snapped the Wolf, baring his teeth as he spoke; “you can go about boasting that you once put your head into a Wolf's mouth and didn't get it bitten off. What more do you want?”
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10. THE HORSE AND THE GROOM V. S. Vernon Jones (1912) There was once a Groom who used to spend long hours clipping and combing the Horse of which he had charge, but who daily stole a portion of his allowance of oats, and sold it for his own profit. The Horse gradually got into worse and worse condition, and at last cried to the Groom, “If you really want me to look sleek and well, you must comb me less and feed me more.”
15. THE OLD WOMAN AND THE DOCTOR V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
An Old Woman became almost totally blind from a disease of the eyes, and, after consulting a Doctor, made an agreement with him in the presence of witnesses that she should pay him a high fee if he cured her, while if he failed he was to receive nothing. The Doctor accordingly prescribed a course of treatment, and every time he paid her a visit he took away with him some article out of the house, until at last, when he visited her for the last time, and the cure was complete, there was nothing left. When the Old Woman saw that the house was empty she refused to pay him his fee; and, after repeated refusals on her part, he sued her before the magistrates for payment of her debt. On being brought into court she was ready with her defence. “The claimant,” said she, “has stated the facts about our agreement correctly. I undertook to pay him a fee if he cured me, and he, on his part, promised to charge nothing if he failed. Now, he says I am cured; but I say that I am blinder than ever, and I can prove what I say. When my eyes were bad I could at any rate see well enough to be aware that my house contained a certain amount of furniture and other things; but now, when according to him I am cured, I am entirely unable to see anything there at all.”
133. THE ANT AND THE DOVE Aesop for Children (191)
A Dove saw an Ant fall into a brook. The Ant struggled in vain to reach the bank, and in pity, the Dove dropped a blade of straw close beside it. Clinging to the straw like a shipwrecked sailor to a broken spar, the Ant floated safely to shore.
Soon after, the Ant saw a man getting ready to kill the Dove with a stone. But just as he cast the stone, the Ant stung him in the heel, so that the pain made him miss his aim, and the startled Dove flew to safety in a distant wood.
A kindness is never wasted.
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THE PEASANT AND THE EAGLE (Perry)
A PEASANT found an Eagle captured in a trap, and much admiring the bird set him free. The Eagle did not prove ungrateful to his deliverer, for seeing him sit under a wall which was not safe, he flew towards him and snatched off with his talons a bundle resting on his head and on his rising to pursue him he let the bundle fall again. The Peasant taking it up, and returning to the same place found the wall under which he had been sitting fallen to the ground and he much marvelled at the requital made him by the Eagle for the service he had rendered him.
MORAL: It is pleasant to read about gratitude even if we don't meet with it often.
38. THE SLAVE AND THE LION V. S. Vernon Jones (1912)
A Slave ran away from his master, by whom he had been most cruelly treated, and, in order to avoid capture, betook himself into the desert. As he wandered about in search of food and shelter, he came to a cave, which he entered and found to be unoccupied. Really, however, it was a Lion's den, and almost immediately, to the horror of the wretched fugitive, the Lion himself appeared. The man gave himself up for lost: but, to his utter astonishment, the Lion, instead of springing upon him and devouring him, came and fawned upon him, at the same time whining and lifting up his paw. Observing it to be much swollen and inflamed, he examined it and found a large thorn embedded in the ball of the foot. He accordingly removed it and dressed the wound as well as he could: and in course of time it healed up completely. The Lion's gratitude was unbounded; he looked upon the man as his friend, and they shared the cave for some time together. A day came, however, when the Slave began to long for the society of his fellow- men, and he bade farewell to the Lion and returned to the town. Here he was presently recognised and carried off in chains to his former master, who resolved to make an example of him, and ordered that he should be thrown to the beasts at the next public spectacle in the theatre. On the fatal day the beasts were loosed into the arena, and among the rest a Lion of huge bulk and ferocious aspect; and then the wretched Slave was cast in among them. What was the amazement of the spectators, when the Lion after one glance bounded up to him and lay down at his feet with every expression of affection and delight! It was his old friend of the cave! The audience clamoured that the Slave's life should be spared: and the governor of the town, marvelling at such gratitude and fidelity in a beast, decreed that both should receive their liberty.
THE HORSE AND THE LOADED ASS (James 139)
A MAN who kept a Horse and an Ass was wont in his journeys to spare the Horse, and put all the burden upon the Ass’s back. The Ass, who had been some while ailing, besought the Horse one day to relieve him of part of his load; “For if,” said he, “you would take a fair portion, I shall soon get well again; but if you refuse to help me, this weight will kill me.” The Horse, however, bade the Ass get on, and not trouble him with his complaints. The Ass jogged on in silence, but presently, overcome with the weight of his burden, dropped down dead, as he had foretold. Upon this, the master coming up, unloosed the load from the dead Ass, and putting it upon the Horse's back, made him carry the Ass’s carcase in
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addition. “Alas, for my ill nature!” said the Horse; “by refusing to bear my just portion of the load, I have now to carry the whole of it, with a dead weight into the bargain.”
A disobliging temper carries its own punishment along with it.
Zeus and the Sheep (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing)
The sheep was suffering a great deal from all the other animals. It went to Zeus to ask that its misery be reduced.
Zeus seemed willing and admitted that he had not provided the sheep with much defense. Might the sheep want sharper teeth and claws? “No,” said the sheep, “I don’t want to be like animals that tear others apart.”
“Could I outfit you with poison?” Zeus asked. “What?!” answered the sheep. “Poisonous snakes are so hated!”
“Hmm,” Zeus thought. “How about horns and a stronger neck?” “No,” answered the sheep. “I won’t become pushy like the ram.”
“Well,” Zeus answered, “you will have to be ready to do harm if you are going to defend yourself from receiving harm from others.”
“Do I have to?” sighed the sheep. “Then let me be as I am. I fear that the power to harm will awaken the desire to do harm. It is better to experience injustice than to do it.”
Zeus blessed the pious sheep, who from then on never complained.
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Luke 10 The Greatest Commandment
There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test him and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” He replied to him, “You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.”
Luke 10:29037 The Parable of the Good Samaritan
But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. Likewise a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn and cared for him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, ‘Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.’ Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” http://archive.org/stream/lessingsfablese00lessgoog
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REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. What would you offer as a good story that shows the Christian sense of humility as receptivity to the gift and/or need of the other?
2. How would you characterize Christian service?
3. Is it fair to say that human love is often about sharing mutual advantages but that Christian love goes further than that?
4. In what way is Christianity for you counter-cultural and challenging?
5. How do you see Jesus answering the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?”
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Bibliography
Books of Fables
The best presentation of the texts of Aesop’s known fables is Aesop’s Fables (Oxford World's Classics) by Laura Gibbs.
Four classic illustrated children’s versions appeared shortly before and after 1900 and are still reprinted and popular today: The Aesop for Children, illustrated by Milo Winter; Aesop’s Fables by V. S. Vernon Jones with illustrations by Arthur Rackham; and The Fables of Aesop by Joseph Jacobs with pictures by Richard Heighway; and The Baby’s Own Aesop with chromolithographs by Walter Crane.
Two particularly spirited recent children’s versions are Animal Fables from Aesop by Barbara McClintock and Aesop’s Fables by Louis Untermeyer with illustrations by A. and M. Provensen.
Three fine collections of texts and illustrations from the history of Western fables are Aesop: Five Centuries of Illustrated Fables, selected by John McKendry (1964); Fables, edited by Anne Stevenson Hobbs (1986); and Aesop's Fables: A Classic Illustrated Edition, compiled by Russell Ash and Bernard Higton (1990).
Jean de La Fontaine transformed Aesop’s fables into exquisite French poetry in the 1600’s. French publishers continue to pour out new artistic renderings of his poems year after year. English translations of classic illustrated versions of his work appear regularly these days, for example Fables of La Fontaine by Walter Thornbury, illustrated by Gustave Doré; Fables of La Fontaine, illustrated by Felix Lorioux; and Selected Fables by Jean de la Fontaine (Penguin Classics), translated by James Michie and illustrated by J. J. Grandville. Other good translators of La Fontaine into English include Elizur Wright, Marianne Moore, and Norman Spector.
Probably the best-known writer of fables after Aesop and La Fontaine is the Russian Ivan Krylov, whose fables are now available in English in the recent translations of both Ethel Heins and David Karpman.
Three outstanding writers of satirical developments of ancient fables are Ambrose Bierce, James Thurber, and Augusto Monterroso. Bierce’s Fantastic Fables, Thurber’s Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated and Further Fables for Our Time, and Monterroso’s The Black Sheep and Other Fables are great for making us stop and think. Also provocative is Fritz Eichenberg’s Endangered Species and Other Fables with a Twist.
For a fascinating presentation of fables outside the Western tradition’s usual stories, try Tales of Kalila and Dimna: Classic Fables from India by Ramsay Wood with illustrations by Margaret Kilrenny.
For further investigation of my own definition of fable, consult my website (www.creighton.edu/aesop), particularly my own article “Fables Invite Perception” from Bestia (1993) at http://www.creighton.edu/aesop/intro/definition.
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Books on Spirituality
One hardly knows where to start or stop in recommending books on spirituality. Let me first recommend an overview and a series. The overview is Wendy Wright’s The Essential Spirituality Handbook, an overview of the foundations of Catholic Christian spirituality and its diverse expressions. The series is “Traditions of Christian Spirituality” from Orbis Books at Maryknoll, NY. Each book presents a select Christian spiritual tradition for contemporary readers.
Next let me select one classic of amazing depth: Poverty of Spirit by Johannes Metz.
From many recent authors who have helped people particularly with their books, I offer five.
Ronald Rolheiser has written, among others, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality; The Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering a Felt Presence of God; and Longing for the Holy: Spirituality for Everyday Life.
Recent helpful books from Richard Rohr include Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life; Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self; and Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps.
Many people have already been helped by Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott.
Thomas Hart’s Spiritual Quest: A Guide to the Changing Landscape invites rethinking of traditional Christian spirituality in a situation in which so much has changed.
I recommend anything by Joyce Rupp, including The Cup of Our Life: a Guide to Spiritual Growth and Open the Door: a Journey to the True Self.
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