Amidst the smuged scribblings of rascals

"The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Understand?" Jack Sparrow.


The festive season looms, so, pull up a chair, take a drink, and enjoy a story...

So, once there was a boy destined to be a king.
To prove his virtue, he was required to spend a night in the forest alone.

Amidst the strange and dark place, the boy found himself overcome by a striking vision.
A voice boomed out from a intense brightness and asked him,
"are you worthy to become the keeper of the sacred cup?"

Before he could answer, he found his mind abuzz with further images - treasures, victories, thousands honoring and serving him. He felt himself welcoming such ambitions, and as he did, a fire fell upon his extended hands and he felt his soul dreadfully wounded and undone.

As he grew older, the inner wound from that night grew deeper, so nothing could fill the void it caused. He found he had no faith, no true love for another, and without comfort and aid, he was surely enslaved to death.

One day, a fool entered the castle and found the benighted king alone. Being simple in his ways, he did not see the troubled soul as a king, only as one in distress and in pain.

"What's wrong?", he asked.

"I'm thirsty".

So the fool took a cup from near the king and filled it with water and gave it to the king to drink.
Instantly, the king's deep wound was healed, for the fool had given him to drink from the sacred cup he had glimpsed that distant day in the woods.

The king turned to the one who had given him aid and said "How did you find what I could not?"

The fool replied "I only saw one in need, and sought to end his thirst".

(The Fisher King).

What I love about this tale is it's truly about us. 

We like to think of ourselves resolutely on our way to better things, until of course something far more tempting crosses our path, and then, without exception, we will be pressed till we succumb to something  that, indeed, burns us, and however stout or noble we may then appear to others (equally covering their folly), we know, like this king, that we are truly torn and bleeding inside, and the wound is terminal.

The other great thing about the tale is that it takes someone deemed to be outrageously ill equipped - a fool - to see the malady and provide the remedy, purely on the basis of seeking to rescue another. 
There isn't any capacity or virtue in the king to change a thing - everything that counts is done to him from outside of himself.

That's the Christmas message.
We can dance and sing, make merry and play, but what's required is a 'fool's wisdom' -
The stable at Bethlehem. The birth of one to take our stead upon the splintered wood of a Roman cross... that's the balm that God wants us to find and drink this season.

The easiest thing is to remain right where we are.
Christmas tells us that we don't have to.

May such warmth warm us this Christmas.