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The Parable of the Seekers (March 6, 2006)
Once upon a time, in a strange and faraway place, there
lived a people who were small, but their numbers were very great, and they
populated a land that, to them at least, was vast. Their kind was ancient,
having occupied the land for uncounted generations. The clans, and communities,
and countries of them were numerous, and there were many different languages
and traditions among them. They had no writing though, because their fingers
were short, and so were their legs, so they rarely ventured very far from their
birthplaces. The landscape where these people lived was ridged and wrinkled,
full of hills and dales, and rills and rivulets, and in the middle of it was an
enormous rise of peaks, that they called the Mountain of God. Most of the people
never knew what lay beyond their own particular crease in the earth, for their
lives were as short as their limbs, and they had to work hard every day for a
living. They all could see the towering tops of the Mountain of God though,
from the higher vantage places, on some days and on moonlit nights, when fog
and clouds didn't hide them. These people had just one food, which they
prepared in many different ways, for variety. This was a sweet, aromatic,
seed-like, whitish substance that appeared overnight as if materializing out of
thin air, like hoarfrost. It was called "manna." Some said it
resembled a gummy resin exuded by certain trees, and some said it was like a
grainy residue left on leaves by aphid-like insects. Legend had it that once, a
great flock of quails had arrived, and then the people had feasted on roast
squab, but as long as anyone living remembered, their food was just manna,
manna, and manna, nothing but manna. The people gathered their manna every
morning and ate it up that day, because it would not keep overnight. It would
spoil and be found crawling with maggots by next morning - except, oddly, on
the sixth night. Every seventh day, no manna would be found, but the leftovers
from the day before would still, inexplicably, be edible. So on that day, which
was called "Shabbat," no one had to labor gathering food. Everyone
said the manna was a gift from God for God's beloved people. Another strange
fact about this land was that the force of gravity was not the same everywhere.
Everything weighed less at higher elevations, and weighed more at lower
elevations. For this reason, though it was difficult for people to climb very
far uphill on their short little legs and tiny feet, their work was easier, and
they felt lighter and more restful when they had made the effort to reach
higher ground. Naturally, hilltop real estate was the most valuable. The big
problem, though, for most people, was that the food collected in the hollows,
and thus only the very rich could afford to pay servants to carry it up the
hillsides to them. Consequently, no one lived permanently on the highest
ridges, where people sometimes came on day-trips, and felt their yokes most
joyously lightened. Now, most of these people didn't think about God very much.
They all believed that God could, in principle, be found way up on the tops of
the Mountain of God, but almost no one claimed to have ever seen God. They
would get together in small or large groups, on Shabbat, to praise and thank
God for not having to work that day, and they cherished and enjoyed that
tradition, but few were really very concerned about God, as Godself. There were
always a few, though, who were ultimately concerned with God. They loved God
with all their hearts, and all their souls, and all their minds, and all their
might. They were called "Seekers." They sought to approach nearer to
God by journeying arduously, step by tiny step, over the land, up hill and
down, toward the mountain of God. As they reached the ridge tops, they felt
weightless and light-hearted, and they knew in which direction to travel
because they could see the peaks of the Mountain of God gleaming beautifully in
the light of the sun and the moon, when the air was clear. They were often
hungry on their pilgrimages, since their manna did not last long during their
crossings of the high country. On Shabbat days, the Seekers rested and
worshipped God with the people gathered in little brown churches in the dells,
who shared their manna with them. For as long as anyone knew, Seekers had told
the gathered people about their visions of the Mountain of God, about their
hopeful journeys, their enlightenment in the high places, how they expected one
day to see God, and to be in God's presence. From time immemorial, multitudes
of Seekers had come from every direction in the land, and many had reached the
Mountain of God. Not only had they done that, but also many had returned to
tell of it. They told of many paths worn and cleared by halting, little steps
up the mountain, and of age-old signs and monuments left by those who had gone
before, showing Seekers the way up, higher and higher. Some paths ended in
sheer stone outcrops, or had been blocked by rockslides. Those ways were hidden
with overgrowth, or covered with rubble. But other paths, though steep and
impossible to discern from below, had been kept open and free from stumbling
blocks. Seekers knew, they said, that some pathways could still be ascended all
the way up. Of these, there were known to be quite a few, approaching the peaks
of the Mountain of God from every side. To reach the summits took Seekers many
years, even lifetimes. It required of them prudence, justice, temperance, and
fortitude. How did the Seekers survive on the rocky mountaintops without fresh
manna? Climbing was easy, even though their short-limbed locomotion was very
slow, because they were light as lizards at that high altitude. Moreover, God
provided them with freeze-dried, extended-release, high-protein,
carbohydrate-balanced manna substitute, with organic preservatives, because God
wanted to see the amazement on their sun burnt faces when they finally arrived.
God had an astonishingly liberating truth to reveal to them, in a blinding
flash of the obvious - which you already know. The Seekers who had made their
way to the top, and returned with the good news of God, advised others to do
this: Find a well-worn path with well-kept signs; study the signs and
understand them, set out on the path you've chosen, paying close attention to
the ground ahead, and stay on that path. That will be your Way. Do not turn
aside from it, looking for a better route. There are many ways to reach the
heights, they said, but scrambling across the mountainside, scrabbling and
sliding on this path, then that, from one blind curve to another, without learning
the meanings of the signs, is not the way. But did the neophyte Seekers heed
the advice their venerable mentors so generously gave them? Actually, most of
them did, because they had never seen pulp fiction or television shows, and
their undergraduate professors were Dominicans and Jesuits, who had taught them
to respect authority and develop self-discipline. And what of the unfortunate,
sophomoric, heedless ones in a hurry, who couldn't tell a blunderbuss from a
bowling pin? Some of them eventually wandered back down into the valleys, all
knot-headed, scraped and bruised, saying, as far as they were concerned, there
was no God up there after all. So, ages came and ages passed, and most of the
people never did see God's face, God never spoke, and they couldn't have read
God's handwriting anyway, but they mostly believed in God nonetheless, and they
kept getting their daily manna. Wise and weary Seekers kept coming back from
the Mountain of God, radiating God's glory, and people fed them and listened to
their stories, but most people really were content just to scrape up breakfast,
lunch, and dinner, and admire the daffodils in the meadows. God, being just and
merciful, and having other worlds to create, continued to love them as long as
their short little lives lasted, because they were God's people, with their
short little fingers and short little legs, and God had promised to deliver
them from evil into the land. And so it was, because even though God is
invisible and speechless, and no one can decipher God's handwriting, God is
nothing if not one who keeps promises.
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