Bedtime Story: the Girl and the Seeds

There was a beautiful young girl with a pure heart and good manners who lived in her step-mother’s home. Her step-mother was very mean to her, and made her do all of the work in the house, cooking and cleaning, gardening and fixing, laundry and wood chopping, for long hours, often until late at night.

One day a basket filled with seeds was sitting on the counter, and as the step-mother walked past, her elbow bumped the basket which spilled the seeds all over the floor. The step-mother became very angry and shouted at the girl: “you will pick up all of these seeds and put them back in the basket, even if you have to work all night long! In fact, you must pick up every last seed before sun up tomorrow, or you will be in serious trouble!”

The girl was frightened and began working immediately to pick up all the seeds. She worked and worked, non-stop, as night came, and the sky grew darker and darker.

She worked all night long, picking up seeds and placing them in the basket, but there always seemed to be more seeds to pick up, under tables and chairs, behind the doors.

She kept on working. In the early hours of the morning, the sky slowly began to become lighter. The girl worked harder. The sky brightened more. She worked even harder. Finally a sliver of sunlight began peeking around the side of the mountain in the far distance, shining through the window.

“Oh great Sun, please do not rise yet, I must finish picking up all the seeds and put them in the basket before sun up! Go back down for a while, I beg of you, so I may finish my task.”

The Sun heard her plea, felt sorry for the girl, and said, “as you wish,” and went back down.

The girl kept working for two more hours. Finally she completed her task – every last seed had been placed back in the basket. And the Sun rose.

The step-mother, seeing the sun rise, went to check on the girl. She found all the seeds had been returned to the basket. She checked thoroughly but not a single seed was left under the tables and chairs, or behind the doors. She has felt sure the girl would fail her task, and was furious to see the work had been completed perfectly.  The step-mother could not punish the girl she had completed the task before sun up.

From that day on, the girl and the Sun were friends. At every sunrise after that, they smiled at each other with knowing joyful happiness.

 

Perfect Moments in the World

There are perfect moments in the world. As a child I used to experience them regularly. As an adult, less often, but sometimes I see them still.

In the middle of being someplace with other people around, at a park or out shopping, walking, looking, thinking, feeling, smelling, hearing – I would suddenly realize it was coming! This whole experience looks and feels an awful lot like a scene from a dream I just had last night. Let me stop and watch what’s happening – oh look, everything is moving right into place! It’s getting closer and closer to exactly what I remember!

And then it happens – the gentle shift into perfection! Everything slides in to exactly how it should be, just as I remember it, an exact singular moment in time for everything around me: those two people who look exactly like that, walking in that direction, one laughs just like that, while a bird flies overhead exactly there, a car honks their horn in the distance behind me and to the right just like I remember, that unmistakable smell in the air, that building with exactly that coloring, asphalt near the sidewalk has a yellow stripe with that one part discolored a little and a few small rocks strewn nearby, the grass and trees just there, waving in the wind just a little; even my thoughts and feelings, or words coming out of my mouth are exactly what I remember that moment to be.

I saw it coming, I observed it, and my thoughts quieted down to watch this event that was nothing spectacular at all. Then, as easily as it slid into place, as everything continues its momentum and movement, it slides right back out into the usual organized-chaos of normal life again. Everything’s back to normal.

How did I know about this before it happened? What is this extreme deja-vu we all experience at times? Where does it come from?

Life is not random.

Life is magical.

Life is encouraging us to discover more.