GOD, A STORY, A COMMENT, and JET DAVID

We all love quaint, little stories that somehow tell us something good about ourselves, or at least something we wanted ourselves to be. The more compact the story, the more old world, the more pure, and the more simple - ever the better.

And so there was this little anecdote relayed to me (and to the rest of the world, it is theirs for the taking) by my friend Jet David through the tried and tested method of blog commenting in the immediately preceding post which, in my heart now, in my mind then, is so gorgeously romantic and penetrating that I am taking the liberty of reproducing it here. The story is very pretty and pretty simple, I had to re-tell it myself.

There was a man philosopher who had great affection for a lady poet, and his main concern was that he had nothing to offer her. So one day he told the poet, "I love you but I have nothing in my hand to show you". The poet, who it turned out loved him too, held his hand and said, "There, it's not empty anymore".

Of course JD, who is not only a good writer but a very efficient and effective storyteller too (even if she felt punctuatingly challenged at times) told this story
a lot better, but I think I got the gist - even if the time in between reading then and retelling just now is lesser than quarter of a day. Still, my truth is, anecdotes such as this are great for the mind and the heart.

And so I will have to tell this other story I read from Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel (I forgot the book, and I can only hope to be as close to its accuracy as possible), which, without any ado, goes like this -

A rabbi, summoning God in the midst of a misfortune that threatens the Jewish people, lit a fire and said a special prayer in a special part of the forest. With that, a miracle happened and the Jews were saved. The rabbi succeeding him went to the same spot in the forest when another misfortune threatened his people, but he told God, Master, I don't know how to light a fire, but I know how to say the prayer - and I hope it's sufficient. God found it sufficient and the miracle happened. The next rabbi went to the same spot in the forest to overcome the next misfortune and said, Master, I don't know how to light a fire nor to say the special prayer, but I am here and I hope it is sufficient. God considered it sufficient, and the misfortune was averted. When the next misfortune happened, the fourth rabbi was somewhere. He said to God, Master, I don't know how to light a fire, I can't say the special prayer, and I don't even know where the special spot in the forest is. But I hope you find it sufficient that I can tell this story.

God found it sufficient and the misfortune was averted because, as Wiesel says it, God loves stories.

The French writer Michel de Montaigne said that while religious exercises of his time (and ours, too) contain the utterance "Lift up your hearts", the Romans said it differently: "Think of this".

Think of this, Jet's relayed story, and that of Wiesel's, every now and then, lift up my heart - and that's just one of life's many little miracles.