Serendipity and Serenity
Its three in the morning; liver time according to traditional Chinese medicine, and as anyone who over imbibes will testify, the time the liver wakes up and processes the evening's excesses. But alas this is not the case with me, temperate soul that I've become. So why am I awake most mornings between 2.30 and 4.30 am?
Because it is the optimum time for solving the world's problems and focusing on my own. Which brings me to examine the issues of the perennially anxious. The big issues are all under control if my world view is adopted: with the redistribution of wealth, disarmament, conservation, reparations and specific projects and programmes for healing the Earth and her peoples. Its the other things that offer me a constant challenge, such as reconciling the notion that I am in that 1 per cent of people in the world with all the basic requirements for a comfortable life (I have enough food to eat, clean water, a safe, warm place to live, access to health and education services and some money in the bank and I am not worried that my children will step on a land mine or die of a preventable disease) yet here I am stewing over a spate of recent postponements and cancellations of jobs.
My anxiety is about control, and calls for a quick invocation of the Serenity Prayer:
God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
It has just dawned on me why I rescued the tangled marionette from the op shop. Abdullah, the wise man was keeping company with the headless clown and nondescript boy, so after much deliberation and trying to untangle the fishing wire, I cut his strings. I brought him home, restrung him and now could pull the strings and make him do what I want. The puppeteer. Hah! We like to think we are in control of these creatures we give voice and movement to, but we are simply the means of allowing them to express themselves. It is our own inadequacies that set the boundaries for their expression. He is his own story and I have been chosen to share this part of his life's journey.
So what is the first story Abdullah has to share with me? A story of Trust. A story of Faith. A tale that can be found in Watermelons, Walnuts and the Wisdom of Allah: And Other Tales of the Hoca by Barbara K Walker and Harold Berson.
Abdul was a man who had everything a man could want. A loving wife, four healthy children, a strong house and a craft of which he could be justly proud. But what he cherished most of all was his garden. Each evening after tending the fruit and nut trees, and watering his vegetables he would sit with his back against the walnut tree and look over the bounty his garden brought forth.
One evening he sat staring at the watermelons, huge oval fruits that hung upon the vine. And he pondered on why Allah had created such a weak, spindly vine to support such heavy fruit. At the same time he was resting his back against the great hardy trunk of a walnut tree on which grew such small nuts.
Suddenly a gust of wind blew through the tree and shook off a nut. It dropped upon his head. Abdul rubbed the spot where it had fallen, looked up at the tree and smiled. Allah had answered his question.
