Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a
great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the
twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life,
and resisting the current was what each had learned from birth. But one
creature said at last "I trust that the current knows where it is going.
I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die
of boredom."
The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that
current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks,
and you will die quicker than boredom!"
But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and
at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet, in
time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free
from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried,
"see a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the
Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current said,
"I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if
only we dare to let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure."
But they cried the more "Savior!" all the while clinging to the
rocks, making legends of a Savior.
From Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
by Richard Bach
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