Image Credit; Felipe Labate @ Unsplash
There once was a lush garden in a valley carved out between giant, brown, rolling sand dunes. It was a paradise of flowers, trees and birds with a clear, blue pond at its center. Beauty walked among the towering trees and sat beside the pond each day, marveling at the perfection of her paradise. This small oasis was Beauty’s favorite place in all the world, a place she had crafted to be a retreat for her. This was the place Beauty ran to when Evil pressed in on her and buffeted her until she could no longer bear the pain. Here she could have peace, she would gain strength from the water of the cool, blue pond and feel the embrace of the flowers. The very air was full of renewal, and Beauty filled her lungs with it. Afterwards, she would return to the world, touching the hearts of the people, filling places with grass and flowers and wild animals of the earth, sky and sea, and inspiring as many minds as she could to use their gifts to fight the ugliness of this world. But always, fighting against Evil drained her and sent her flying back to the oasis.
One quiet day, when the skies were gray and the wind was cold, a young boy in a thin coat walked home from school. He entered his home to find his mother asleep, the medicine bottles beside her bed lined up in an attempt to fight the sickness inside her. The boy sat beside his mother, and she roused. “Hello, my angel,” she said to him, and smiled. He brought her a glass of water but she was already asleep again. He found bread and butter and made himself a sandwich, sitting in the kitchen, brushing tears from his cheeks between bites. Suddenly, there was a loud pounding on the front door.
The boy opened the door to see their landlord standing on the stoop, his hands on his hips.
“Is your mother home?” he asked.
“She’s asleep.”
“I need the rent for this month, and last month, too. I need to talk to her.”
“You know she’s sick! She’s sleeping. This is our home, and we’ve never missed a payment until recently. She’s doing the best she can,” the words spilled out, then the boy stopped, breathing hard. “I’ll tell her to call you later.”
The landlord ran his hand over his face, thinking. “Look,” he said, “you tell her if I don’t have the rent by tomorrow I’m going to evict you. Do you know what that means? I’m going to have the police escort you right out of here.” He paused, while the boy paled. “Everybody gets sick. It’s not my problem. You tell her, right? You better make sure she understands!” The man turned and left and the boy slowly closed the front door, then ran to his room.
Throwing himself down on the bed, he looked at a small styrofoam cup on the bedside table. His Sunday School teacher had given each child in his class a cup. She had planted a flower seed in each one so the children could see a flower grow and understand that just a small seed of knowledge of God’s goodness could grow into something beautiful. The boy didn’t realize that Beauty was there with him, making the seed grow much quicker than it should have, and a tiny blue flower was raising its head. The boy began to cry but these were not tears of sorrow and pain. He had felt in his heart that everything was going to be alright. Somehow, everything was going to be okay.
Tired, Beauty gathered her strength to fly to her oasis to rest. But there was another guest in the boy’s quiet house. Evil had stayed behind when the landlord left, and he saw that Beauty was weak and getting ready to flee. He followed Beauty.
When Beauty arrived at her paradise, she ran to the clear pond, thirsty for its healing properties. But Evil threw himself into the waters, destroying the purity of the pond. He trampled the flowers and pulled them up. He blew his hot, life-killing breath across the air that had been filled with life and renewal. As she lay weakened, Evil destroyed the lush garden that Beauty had created, leaving behind a barren wasteland with only some broken trees remaining, standing like broken teeth against the brown of the dunes.
Beauty finally regained enough strength to escape and she found a green place to rest and grow strong. Beauty still battles against Evil, but without the renewal and power she found in her oasis. Will Beauty ever again create for herself a home? We can only hope.
“Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.”
― Henry James, Theory of Fiction: Henry James
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A Little Bit of Everything, With Love 