The beggar boy went to the Arab shop every day to steal food.
He was an expert. He waited patiently until the owner was busy serving and he would slip a loaf of bread or a hunk of cheese into his coat, to quieten the hunger in his belly.
He was a pitiful sight, he knew it. Sometime ago he had glimpsed his reflection in a glass and it had startled and disgusted him. An unwashed, skinny Jew with the look of a wild animal, an orphan of wars. Discarded refuse. Unwanted. Unseen. Untouchable. Unloved. Before his parents had died he had been well educated, well fed and had a home. He had believed in angels. Now he didn't believe in anything but hunger.
He stood thinking on it this day, behind the tree as was his custom, as he waited for someone to come to distract the old man.
The boy fidgeted. His belly growled. He was annoyed at the greedy old Arab who sat each day outside his shop to read the paper as if he had nothing but time. Arabs hated Jews and so he didn't feel bad taking this man's wares. Even so every night he would feel a pang of conscience and taking a branch from the tree opposite the shop he would sweep the footpath outside it as penance. Every morning the old Arab would open his doors and look around him with a smile on his face as if he had seen heaven.
This day there was no opportunity to steal anything for when the old man was busy there were too many people outside and he was afraid that someone might see him and call the police and when it was quiet the old man sat again with his newspaper, looking over its rim as if he expected something to happen.
The boy left to look elsewhere, dejected, hungry.
In the night it was windy and he couldn't sleep from hunger. When the wind died down he went to the shop again and took a branch from the old tree and began to sweep the leaves from the steps when he saw a loaf of bread there, sitting on a napkin. Too hungry to care why it was there, he took it, but before he could tear it in half he saw that something was written on the napkin.
“I waited all day for you. Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?'
The boy was filled with panic. He thought he could see the old man's shadow in the window of his shop waiting to snatch him and to take him to the police and so he ran away.
Later that day he returned. He wanted to confess and to ask the old Arab for his forgiveness but his shop was closed. It was closed the next day and the day after that. On the third day the boy asked the lady who lived next door what had happened to the old man.
'Why do you care? He died on that windy night from cold sitting by the window waiting for that angel of his.'
'Angel?' The boy was amazed.
'Yes he said that an angel from Jehova came to him every day to take bread from him and every night he returned to sweep his steps. Imagine that! An angel of Jehova eating bread and sweeping the steps of an Arab shopkeeper!'
Choking back tears the boy walked away, thinking that there must be an angel in every one for that old man had been his angel! He had always known of his stealing and had done nothing! And, the boy thought, if there was an angel in him too, then he had better make something of his life, that way the old man's death would not be in vain!
Years later he was a man valued in his community as honest hardworking and kind. He always left a loaf out on the steps of his house. When they asked him why he said -
'You never know what angels are about..'
The two, the older master and his novice were on their daily walk. Every afternoon they set off to collect medicinal herbs from the woods neighbouring the monastery for the herbaria. This day was chilly and the blueness of the sky signalled the onset of Autumn. The master walked with purpose, his old limbs accustomed to these walks kept a rigorous pace while the novice was cold and found it hard to keep up with his master.
'Every criticism is a judgement of the intellect in your soul and your soul is subject to error, to lies,' he said, pausing to stroke a flower that pleased him.
'But master, I saw it with my own eyes! He took more food than he needed.' The boy hugged himself to keep warm. 'Nearly twice as much, at a guess!'
The master straightened and looked at his charge. 'And your eyes are your measure, this what you are telling me, you believe only what you see? Well, your eyes only see half the truth and half a truth is merely a lie.'
The body frowned indignantly. 'Why is it a lie?'
'Look at the world around you my son! Do you believe that this which you see only with your eyes is all there is?'
'Is there more?'
'This is only one half of it, the dead part.'
'What do you mean? These herbs we have been picking are living and because they are living they heal!'
'Yes, but that is only half a truth. They are only alive because the wisdom of God, the spirit of Christ, the will of Christ, penetrates them and weaves about them. That is why they heal, not because they are alive, but because of what lives in them. Christ lives in us too...in the warmth of our blood and this gives us the possibility for rising above the errors in our thinking.'
'I must confess I do not see His spirit.'
'Perhaps not, but are you so arrogant as to think that just because you can't see something it doesn't exist? Consciousness is not reality. For instance, have you ever visited the Notre Dame in Paris?' his master asked, as he bent to inspect a fern.
'No, but I have heard tell it is beautiful.'
'The Notre Dame does not require your consciousness for its existence and thank God the spirit does not rely on you likewise! The subtle error of the intellect is that it judges only what it sees and binds the soul to all that is dead and this is what makes the soul unfree.'
'So, you say we should never speak the truth?' the boy said defiantly.
The old monk straightened again and sighed. 'Oh you are a silly, silly boy! We speak only when we see the 'real' objective truth, we withhold our imperfect judgement because the truth comes from a living understanding that is higher than the intellect since it is born not out of death but out of the living spirit. Only when we can move freely and objectively out of ourselves to SEE a thing can we know it is true and in so doing we overcome ourselves and we are freed from the power that binds all earthly beings...death.”
'What does this have to do with brother Amius, after all?'
'You say he took more than he needed?'
'Yes, far more, and I would say further that the abbot is foolish for allowing it!'
'And yet you do not take account of what you do not see. This herb I have just picked, it is a poison and yet you and I know that it also heals. The truth is often the opposite of what the ordinary intellect can know. The truth is that Brother Amius was not taking more than he needed at all. He was, in fact, taking less.'
The boy remonstrated, 'I am not blind I saw it myself!'
'But you are blind, blind because you do not see the spirit of Christ in this herb and blind because you do not know that the food Amius took this morning was not for him, it was for our ailing brother Gabriel, for whom we seek these herbs. Amius has asked that his portion be added to Gabriel's portion until he is well.'
The boy felt a sudden emotion rise to his throat. 'Oh Lord! I was wrong!'
'Yes yes!' The old man said enthusiastically. 'You were!'
'How can you be so glad of my error!'
'Because at this moment you are truly free!'
'What do you mean!' the boy let go of his basket and fell to his knees, his head in his hands. 'I am damned! I am damned!' he lamented.
'No my boy, you are not damned! There there,' The master soothed. 'It is only through error that we can learn to know who we are, and it is only by learning who we are that we can be free of ourselves to become who we are meant to be!'
He helped the boy up and together they collected the basket and herbs that had scattered about, and thus they continued their walk in silence.
But now the boy was no longer cold...a warmth had entered into his heart and a new enthusiasm fired up his limbs.
He wondered if this could be the spirit of Christ.
