by Zubin Mathai
The worker had been running for hours, and the shock of the wasp’s near-attack was fading. For all she knew that foe was dead, suffocated by the twirling winds, or at least carried far enough away to never bother her again. She was now only focused on the trail of pink leading her on from the sky.
Even though the petals had never spoken to her — it was always the wind whispering — the worker knew the petals were shouting at her to follow. Something so brilliant, so vibrantly colored in this land of muted greens and browns, had to be a siren call to something wonderful.
When she crested a small hill she caught sight of that flat disk of amber fire again, and could see that it was a lake. The lake reflected the sun, and the sun seemed entranced by its own face in the water. It was locked staring at itself, silent and yet speaking volumes, for it was the destination the petals were racing towards.
A collection of trees lined up to welcome the worker with stretched out branches, bowing to this little traveler whose adventure had taken her so far. She ran between the trunks, yelling out hellos in passing, and came to a spot by the lake’s shore where petals seemed to be converging. She looked up and saw winds from all directions bringing in splashes of every color. From the West, where the worker had come from, came the pink petals; the reds and purples flew in from the South, while the North and East were bringing in blues. The petals happily collided, as the wind softened, and then tumbled down into the lake.
The worker sat on the shore and watched in wonder as the petals floated, now trapping brilliance as wetness. They twirled around, bowing politely to each other on ripples; then, one by one, as each petal became waterlogged, they dimmed in brightness, lost their color, and sank into darkness.
The worker stared for a moment, dumbfounded. This could not be it, she thought.
She sat expectant, following with her head as more petals arrived, collided, and fell. Eventually the wind died down, done for another day, and no more petals were delivered. The worker stared at the remaining petals on the lake, holding her breath, but then sighing out in confusion when the last of them sank.
She stood and spun around, looking for clues of a home she knew must be somewhere here. She ran to nearby trees and rocks, looking beside or under, and even flung away leaves and pebbles.
Nothing was here, except nature as usual.
It was not so easy to accept, and so the worker tried again. She retraced her steps to the welcoming line of trees and searched. No ants or colonies were spotted, and so she went back to the lake, to where the petals sank under, and checked all along the shore. Nothing was there except leaves and twigs in the dirt.
The sun floated down, and it reached an angle where the lake’s light was suddenly turned off. The water was no longer a cauldron of fire, but now just darkened and cold, as if it had no memory of the sun-hands it had just been holding.
Nature quieted down as the sun set further. Birds stopped chirping, and rustling in the dirt from foraging animals faded away.
This could not be it, repeated the worker to herself.
As the sky went from blue to gray, and some brave stars began twinkling, the worker inched up to the lake to look down into its depths. Perhaps, now that the water was not reflecting the sun, it might reveal where the petals had gone. All the worker saw, when she peered over the edge of the shore, was her own reflection.
The lake was still enough that her face was clear, and she looked into her eyes and saw her antenna flop over in defeat. From a branch, a leaf fell into the water and sent out ripples, and when the worker’s reflection began blurring, everything changed.
For an instant, her reflection was that of her friend, the soldier’s, and it shocked her enough to jump back. Cautiously she crept forward, and when the water calmed, it was her own reflection once more. That brief image of the soldier began chipping away at the wall inside, and the numbness the worker had wrapped herself with began to unravel. She fell to her knees, and tears started welling up in her eyes.
My friend, she thought, my soldier friend. My best and only friend is dead. I will never see her again.
The worker fell over as memories tore open wounds in her mind. She suddenly remembered all the images she was blocking, of the wasp killing her friend, and of her friend’s deepest sacrifice. The lake painted with ripples as if it was happening all over again, all the times her friend had kept her safe in her stolid and quiet way, as well as the wasp’s stinger stabbing her abdomen, again and again.
Night came, and the worker did not sleep, instead, crying out, heaving and gasping and sobbing, as the stars above tried to keep her tender company.
The next morning the sun rose and warmed the air, and by late afternoon it kissed the lake and set it to brilliance once more. Winds rose up and petals flew in, but they did not greet the worker, who was still lying on her side by the shore. Another night came, and so did more crying.
Days passed, and the worker did not move or eat. Some hours there were no winds and no petals, but other hours they flew in to dance, twirl, and then sink into darkness. The worker lay where she had fallen the first day, as the wind pushed dried leaves against her to keep her warm. She kicked the leaves away, choosing instead tears running down her face to keep her cold.
One day, a day the worker did not know was a whole week after she had first arrived, some fluffy birds floated down to land. They chirped to each other excitedly, yelling out the joys of nature, and began upturning leaves looking for food. When one of the robins saw the ant, it called its friends over, and they all gathered around. One pecked at the worker, missing her by a millimeter, and then leaned over, cocking its feathered head in curiosity.
The robins chattered, asking if any knew why this ant was on its side leaking water from its eyes. Each of them dared the next to eat it, but they were all cautious, thinking it diseased. Trees stood quiet guard as the birds debated, and finally, a creak of sliding wood rang out, echoing across the lake to scare the birds away.
The worker rolled over to her other side and saw a large animal approaching. It had come from a square structure made of logs, one she had not noticed on her first day here. As the animal stomped over, the worker saw it was one of the horrid ones, the two-legged creatures called humans. It stopped short of crushing her, then crouched down to see what the birds had been staring at.
When it leaned in, each of its eyes the size of twenty ants, the worker could see that it was an old man. He stared at her for a while and even got down on hands and knees, squinting his wrinkled eyes for a better look. He pursed his lips and blew across the worker, checking if she would move, and only frowned when all she did was wriggle her legs in annoyance.
Finally, the man stood up and retreated to his home, and the worker was glad, for in solitude she could wallow in memories, in home-less memories, and cry until she died.
A few seconds later the creaking wood sounded out again, and the man emerged to re-walk dried leaves and crouch near the worker. All she saw was his wrinkled face still frowning, and his wrinkled hands lifting up something yellow and shiny. Then, all of a sudden, drops of liquid began raining down around.
Since the worker was busy crying for the past, memories of the first time she had seen one of these two-legged creatures came easily. She remembered that fateful day when the human who lived beside the sea of flat stones rained down poison from the sky. That was the day her sisters died, and the day her queen came out to shrivel up before her eyes. That was also the day her best friend had tasted a sip of poison that would spell her doom.
What if, thought the worker, the soldier had not tasted that poison. She would have stayed her strong self. She would not have been in so much pain and would have been able to fight that wasp. She would still be here today, to help me find a home, and to be my friend.
If all these humans did was dole out poison from the sky, the worker was okay with that. As the man stood and walked back to his home, the worker strained her neck so she could reach one of the drops. She drank it up and waited
to die, hoping that if there were an afterlife perhaps she might meet her friend again. If she were given the choice of what role to play in heaven, she would choose worker. She would lift leaves all day, have her sisters tease her and the soldier stand up for her, have everything be exactly as it was when she hated it so much that she loved it.
She thought these humans were such evil tricksters, for this poison tasted so sweet, almost as if it were honey.
The next day came, the sun rose, and the worker was still alive. The man stepped out to check on her, and this time he dropped cooked grains of rice all around. The worker nibbled on one when the man left, thinking it so cruel that these humans made poison in all manner of shapes and tastes.
When the third day came, and the sun turned the lake to fire once more, the worker began to suspect that she would not die. The honey and rice the man had dropped maybe were not poisoned, and indeed, they seemed to be giving her strength. She stood up for the first time since memories of the soldier had overwhelmed her, but still she had no idea where to go.
When the man came out and found the worker, he tenderly scooped her onto a leaf. He brought her closer to his home, to a cut tree stump, where the top was weathered but smooth. He placed her down and left the leaf for a bed, and then dripped honey and rice to one side. On the other side he dropped some tiny glimmering grains, and to the ant, they were giant crystals with tempting, sweet smells.
The worker inched cautiously to one of the cubes, keeping her eyes fixed on the towering beast. These grains were the most glorious thing she had ever eaten, and the notes of their taste were as bright as the sunlight captured by their angles. Without hesitation, perhaps even with the first smile since she had arrived, she stepped forward and ate another of the crystals.
“Sugar,” spoke the man, but his voice was too loud to the worker, and its vibrations hit the ant in a thumping wave and knocked her over.
The man squinted and crouched down, and his breathing was strong enough to create a tumbling wind. He closed his mouth and softened his eyes, and now those eyes were catching the sun as brightly as the lake behind.
“Sugar,” said the man, still with his mouth closed, and this time softly enough that his voice seemed a caress instead of a slap.
When the man saw the worker seemingly smile, and then crawl over to grab another grain of sugar, he spoke again with mouth closed.
“I can see you understand me, little ant,” said the man. “I am speaking in my mind, letting words float out on the silence of nature, and it’s precious to see that you seem to know this quiet language. I never had confirmation that creatures knew when I was trying to communicate, but now it seems to be.”
The man cracked a smile and knelt to one knee, staring fascinated as the worker became adventurous, mixing honey and rice and coating it all with sugar. She ate with a grin, and even a tiny hop to her step as she went for more.
“Can you tell me how you got here? Or why you are here? You seem a different type of ant than I have ever seen. There is something unique about the way you carry yourself. It is like you can see me clearly, and also, on that first day I saw you, you seemed to be crying — which is not at all possible for an ant.”
The worker at first did not answer, for while she was relishing his tasty food, she wasn’t sure if she should trust this human. He was too large for her to relate to, even if he did speak her language, and even if the sun in his eyes was painting him as equally a part of nature as she was.
As the ant continued quietly eating, the man decided to make her comfortable by sharing his story. “Okay. Let me tell you about me first then.”
The man grunted as he moved to sit. “I grew up nearby, in the city a few miles down that road,” and the man pointed at a clear swath through the trees, and somehow the worker now knew what a road and city was. Any time the man used a word she had never heard before, the way it was delivered, through the stillness of his mind lock-stepped with nature, seemed to bring with it a definition too.
“I worked in those oil fields down across the canyon, started when I was a teenager and worked until my hands and back would no longer cooperate. I grew old, had a wife and watched as our child grew old too. When I was alone, when my family was no longer there, I decided to retire to this plot of land, build my cabin, and wait out my days.”
As the man spoke, still through a closed mouth, the worker began to fall into his story, and with her full tummy, her eyes easily blurred. Daydreams came, daydreams painted by truth instead of imagination, and the worker saw the man’s past as clear as day.
She saw him, old and bent over, come here one day in a vehicle she learned was a truck. She saw him spend the first day in a sleeping bag under the stars, and then the second day chopping trees. As he worked, surrounded by nature’s un-forceful embrace, she saw that his hands began to straighten and his back stand taller.
He built a log cabin, spending time on little things as if they were the most important, taking a whole two days to carve a door handle perfectly round. He whittled a branch into the shape of a spoon and then removed the roughness with a sanding stone and now-steady hands. That spoon was a work of art, could have hung in any gallery, but the man only used it to eat his morning oatmeal with a peaceful smile.
After hearing and seeing more of the man’s story, the ant began feeling a kinship to him. Even though there was a tinge of jealousy, for he had the skill to build his own home, she saw the moods of the man, how he went from alone, with no family to care for him, to fully connected, where all the things he made were tinted with a silent, connected love.
The worker was now brave enough to speak to this giant friend. She swallowed the last bit of sugar she had been chewing on, and then spoke in her mind, as silently as the man. “I came here,” she said, “because I followed petals on the wind. I was sad and crying when you saw me because I am alone. My best friend — the only true friend I ever had — is dead.”
Reacting in a surprising way, the man stopped his silent story and began to cry. His tears were as huge as rain drops, and when one almost smashed into the poor ant, he apologized and turned away. He leaned up against the stump, and the worker could see his body heave up and down. The man’s knee was close enough, and so the worker inched forward and reached out. She held on to the stump with five legs and stretched until she was finally able to offer a tiny caress.
The man turned and gave a faint smile through his water-welling eyes. “You are indeed special, little ant,” he said, then wiped his tears with a wrinkled hand, before continuing. “I know of death. We had a child who didn’t make it, who the world wanted to take back. I know the empty hole inside you because for years that is all that made up my insides.”
“Let me tell you,” said the man, as he wiped more tears and then brushed the rice and sugar into neat piles on the stump. “The first year I came here all I worried about was food and water. I built a well and planted crops, and soon I didn’t need to go to the city for supplies. Once that was all taken care of, I had the luxury to sit by the lake and think. At first, all I dwelled on was the past, and I cried my tears like you did, but then one day a stream of petals flew in on the wind. I was brought back to the wonder of nature, and you know, little ant, that was the day I started to wonder about God.”
The worker perked up at that last word, and curiously, the man’s silent voice did not bring in a definition with it. The ant frowned and raised a leg.
“What is God?” she asked.
The man stayed silent for a bit and then smiled. “I was going to tell you about death and life, but yes, perhaps speaking about God would be more interesting.”
Then with a grunt that shocked the ant like a wave of thunder, the man struggled to stand and straighten out his back. “But that is enough talking for today,” he said. “I would invite you inside, but there are too many places for you to get lost in. Stay out here in nature. The leaf will keep you warm, and the food will keep you fed. Watch the stars, for they are some of
the eyes of that new word you heard, God, and then tomorrow I can tell you more.”
“Day after day, those petals came,” said the man in his wordless voice.
It was a new morning, and the sun was out early to warm up the dew and turn moisture into mist. The ant threw off the cover of the leaf and found a patch of sun to warm up in, and then began nibbling on some rice and honey for breakfast.
“I chased those same petals all the way from the drought-stricken lands,” said the worker between two bites.
“They are beautiful aren’t they?” the man said with a grin. “For months they teased me with their mystery. Where did they come from, and why were the winds bringing them here? But then, when I saw that questioning them was taking me away from the beauty of their dance, I let that go. When I did, when I surrendered, they began to whisper to me.”
By now the worker was stuffed, lying with a satiated grin as the man sat with his back up against the stump. He turned to make sure the ant was listening, before continuing.
“My old friends would think I was foolish if they saw me back then. Harold sitting by a lake, watching petals fly in, twirl on winds and then sink into some water. But I didn’t care. I came here thinking I was waiting for the end of my life, that the world had nothing interesting left for me, so the petals coming were a gift from God.”
“That word again,” said the worker, interrupting, “what is it?”
“This will be an interesting challenge,” answered the man. “How can I describe what took me twenty years of sitting quietly by this lake to see? Well, perhaps me teaching you will save you some time and grief, so I might as well try. I learned — and mind you, it was not from those petals, but rather what moved them — that God was in everything, too big to understand, but so simply pervasive that it was impossible not to.”
The worker still looked confused, and so the man went quiet, trying to figure out the best way to explain a concept that, to him, he had never converted to words.
“I think there are four ways to catch glimpses of God, and by describing those to you, you might get a better picture. Together those four glimpses add up to everything that life on this world needs to live in peace within divine reflections.”
“Since you mentioned the death of your friend,” said the man, and the worker felt a stab of pain at the reminder, so she reached out for a comforting grain of rice. “Sorry, little ant, but let me tell you that death and life, all things that change, must be held in something bigger for them to make sense. The first lesson is that God, the changeless, is the only thing big enough to hold the changing.”
As the man continued speaking, a precious daydream came to the worker, and she did not know that — like all the daydreams that ever came to her — it came on loan from God herself, rather than from the worker’s own mind.
The worker saw the soldier, her best friend, crawl up over the lip of the stump and run towards her. The worker knew this must not be real, for the soldier was happy and smiling, and she had two perfectly-formed eyes ablaze with life. The soldier ran over and hugged the worker, and even though there was no real physical touch, that hug imparted something powerful.
Tears came to the worker’s eyes, and at first, she thought she was sad, but she quickly saw that these were tears of joy. She ran and played with the soldier. They chased each other in circles and zig-zags, jumping over rice and sugar, and whenever the soldier would catch her, she’d give a friendly little shake. Their play excited winds and all of a sudden petals began raining down. The pink wanted to join in on the play, and it happily surrounded.
Locking their front legs together, the soldier and worker stood at stump-center and spun in laughing circles. For an instant the worker looked away, distracted by one of the petals, and when she looked back her friend was gone. The worker fell to her knees, shocked at the slap of suddenness. She cried in this daydream, enough tears to flood the stump and dissolve the sugar.
Then she gave up crying, for she was feeling something weird in her legs. She frowned and focused, stood again and began spinning, and could now feel her friend’s invisible legs in hers. The worker looked inside, and it was as plain as day. There was still joy and completeness all around; there was still a feeling of play, of home, but now it was coming from the petals and wind twirling around.
All the petals were shining beyond brilliance, and the worker felt something mysterious, something more diffuse than the extremes of sadness and happiness that painted this daydream, something that could only be described as peace. She wondered if this feeling was what that word God meant.
“I see you have heard my words,” said the man. The worker was snapped out of her daydream, but her smile remained. “That is good enough for this morning. Enjoy more of the day, the sunlight and warmth. Play with the flies and butterflies, and I will come back later with the next lesson.”
The man returned as promised, stepping out of his cabin at the moment the sun dipped low enough to set the lake on fire. Today was a day that petals flew in on the wind, and the man took a minute to stand frozen by the shore. The worker could see his gentle smile and shining eyes, even as petals landed and sank, and she felt ashamed at her tortured reaction when she had seen the same.
“I appreciate you giving me food and keeping me company,” said the worker when the man came to sit beside the stump. He smiled, letting echoes of his quiet, lakeside moment ring through his face.
“But,” continued the worker, “I only came this way looking for a home. Soon I will have to be on my way and continue my search.”
The man dropped his smile and his wrinkles shifted, pulling long and hinting at a pained spot inside. “Home,” he said, as tears welled up in his eyes, “is an interesting word. The way you said it, little ant, I know you know the treasure it holds.”
Pausing for another stream of petals to fly by overhead, the man brought his head close to the stump and tried on another smile. This one combined faintly with his still-saddened eyes.
“It took me twenty years of sitting out here to realize that home is God,” said the man. “And that is the second lesson, that God is home and love. Before I came here, even though I lived in a house with my lovely wife and our child, I don’t think I knew the true meaning of home”.
The man settled in to tell his tale, and his voice softened, with its silence seemingly coming from nature itself. Trees and sunlight were speaking the man’s words, and they came to caress the worker, relax her, and blur her eyes to a daydream.
The worker saw a small version of the man standing on the stump before her, and his shimmering form was now her height. He was old and bent over, but he began regressing before her eyes; wrinkles faded, a back straightened, and his hair turned from gray to black. A woman appeared, the wife of the man, and the young couple danced happily on the stump to music the worker swore she could hear.
Images of a baby came, and then another, and the babies grew to young children. The husband and wife were suddenly in black as one of the children faded out. Sadness became distance and arguing, all acted out by the translucent couple before the worker. The worker saw how alone the man was, even with his wife by his side, as his tiny tears fell to make homelessness inside a house.
The tiny couple on the stump faded out and what faded in to replace them brought laughter to the ant. Her colony appeared, and all the sisters who used to tease her stepped out of shimmering light. They were ghosts twinkling in to a seeming solid reality, and they ran forward to hug and caress her.
For precious moments, the worker felt at home again, as she picked up imaginary leaves and carried them with her sisters. Maybe it was being surrounded by her friends, or maybe it was because she was playing her role, marching in line with a carried load, but all these images were doing were convincing the worker that she still needed to find a new colony to take her in.
She un-blurred her eyes, forced away the daydream, even as a pink petal flew down close to the trunk. The worker did not know that that
petal had a speech prepared, the first real whisper a petal was willing to give her. It was going to tenderly say, through its pulsing pink, Little one, hear me when I say God is home, home is love, and all love is, is self-recognition in things other than oneself.
The next morning there was a bartering, with the worker ready to leave this spot and continue her journey, and the man begging her to stay.
“Are you not curious to hear more of God?” asked the man.
When the worker said she was, but the call to find a new home was just as strong, the man struck her a bargain. He brought out more food, especially more honey and sugar, and plastered it all over the empty spots of the trunk.
“Stay a while,” he said. “Stay and let me finish my lessons, and then I will help you on your way.”
The worker smiled and nodded, already gnawing on the new sugar grains. Grunting as his body bent over to sit, the man grew a wistful smile and added more words under his breath.
“Or perhaps,” he whispered, soft enough that the worker did not hear “you might learn to love it here and keep me company forever.”
When the man was comfortable, sitting on a blanket and leaning up against the trunk, he checked to make sure the ant was well fed and smiling. He asked if she was listening, and when she nodded, he began speaking in his quiet, inner voice.
“I will tell you a new lesson that perhaps no one wants to tell you. I’ve told you that God is the thing that holds life and death, holds all change. Then I’ve told you that God is home and love, and now I will tell you a shocker.”
With a full tummy, it was easy for the worker to fall over to her side and listen with dreamy eyes, letting the winds of imagination carry the man’s words right into her mind.
“God is not a trickster,” said the man, and the worker saw petals raining down from the sky.
“People will tell you that God is hard to find, that She is hidden, that you have to spend decades in practice, study, or penance to find Her.”
As the man spoke, the petals spread out over the forest, flying off in all directions. Petals landed on leaves and became absorbed into green, and others flew to cover trunks, morphing into the roughly channeled brown. Petals covered the lake and became ripples, and even landed on the ground to rot into dirt.
“But God is just aching to be seen,” said the man. “And that’s the third lesson: that God’s wish — the only wish of Hers that intersects this world we live on — is for life to see life, for us to see Her, for us to see that we are all already in Her bosom.”
More petals rained down, and they covered the worker in their soothing pink. The worker could feel them, touching and caressing her, making her feel as if drowning in their color and aroma would be the highest blessing in her short life.
“God calls you through every agent of the present moment,” said the man. “Only your thoughts convince you otherwise, so God sends agents to dance with your stubborn beliefs, to tire them out so that you can surrender to Her presence in everything around.”
The worker so wanted to drown, so wanted to inhale the petals through her body, but her longing for home came up from inside to interrupt the moment. She fought for a while, wiggling her legs, frowning, and trying to focus on the petals. Habits were strong, however, and she couldn’t handle the fullness of this torn-open moment.
She began thinking of yesterdays’ daydreams, of her sisters and the soldier, and her longing grew. Even a longing as pure as a longing for home was still a barrier to these dancing petals, and so their color faded to the faintest of shades.
Snapping out of her reverie, the worker realized she must have been in daydream too long, for the man had gone back to his cabin. A light was flickering from inside as a fire burned in a wood stove, and she saw that he had left extra food and leaves for her. He must have even grabbed a few petals from the lake before they sank, for a pile of them was on the stump.
That night, under the stars, the worker had the most precious and blessed pillow to rest her head on.
The lake was not shining, even though the sun was low enough to set it to its usual amber. All the worker saw was a faded reflection of the sun against still waters, and she wondered why. A new afternoon had rolled around, and with the man leaning up against the stump and speaking, the dreamer was caught in a new daydream.
“The last lesson of God I found in my years here is that She has put peace and joy in us at birth. We are already always happy, already at home wherever we are, and only our beliefs block that happiness, for they place the devil’s seed of doubt in us.”
In her daydream, the worker still wondered why the lake was dim and the colors of the forest subdued. As the man kept speaking, talking of this last face of God, the worker decided to leave the stump’s center and crawl to the forest floor. She walked to the lake to look in its depths, and there before her was her daydreamed reflection.
She was not scared, nor did she find it a surprise, when her shimmering reflection began moving its mouth, uttering words in a delicate whisper.
My greatest longing, the only thing convincing me I am incomplete and lacking, is that home is somewhere else and that I am not already there.
A single petal entered this day’s daydream, and it came in on a nonexistent wind. This petal’s color was reserved, just a hint of pink against the turned-down contrast of the forest. When the petal hit the water its ripples erased the worker’s reflection, and for the briefest moment, she saw beneath the surface.
There, in full and splendid color, were all the petals that ever came this way to be reclaimed. They sat at lake bottom — not obliterated or torn apart by water — but fully preserved, perhaps even more whole and perfect than ever. Those petals were the pinkest the worker had ever seen, and their shadings were intense, coalesced from all the individuals, shooting out a light that made the worker stumble back.
Perhaps it was fear, fear of the simplicity of what the man was telling her, but the worker pushed away the daydream, finding herself at stump center once more. She shook her head and spoke a faint and cold sentence. “I thank you for these lessons,” she said. “I truly thank you, but I need to leave soon and find a real home, real sisters, a real colony that would take me in.”
The man only sighed and dropped his head, and then silently stood to gather his things, before retreating to his cabin.
“I will tell you a final bit of wisdom,” said the man the next morning.
The worker had awoken from her restful slumber under the stars, rubbed sleep from her eyes, and saw the man doing something odd. He had piled rice and sugar grains in a perfect circle around the perimeter of the stump, five stories high to the ant, and then dribbled honey all around its inside edge. The worker sat up in confusion as she saw the honey run together, forming a towering, sticky trap to keep her in.
“I’ve only told you the simplest and deepest faces of God,” said the man, “but She is so much more. Don’t you know She was there for every chapter of your adventure? Think back to all you have gone through and see that She spins our dreams and moves our hands as we work. She infuses family and gives life so that death is real. When we are lost She is there in the form of help, and even lights the flames of hate, wonder, aloneness and honor. If you need to see, She perfects your eyes and is both the danger and winds of salvation. She brings water to the lands and fuels the hatred of war. She is, simply, everything: friends, surrender, and, of course, home.”
“Why are you putting all this honey around?” asked the worker.
“So you will have enough to eat.”
“No,” said the worker, “you have already given me enough. You have brought me back from the edge of death and taught me lessons, told me of God and wonder. You are piling this honey so that I cannot leave.”
The man chuckled and put the container of honey back into his pocket. Then he reached down with his giant, wrinkled hand, moving it fast at first, but then gently towards the end. He uncurled a finger and brought it right above the work
er’s head to give her a tender pat.
“When I walk around this lake to get my exercise, I see many ants on the other side. They are always so busy, doing ant things, carrying leaves or dead bugs. You, my friend, are special. You don’t fit into the categories that they would squeeze you into. Why don’t you stay here, by this side of the lake, where the petals come to find their salvation. I will keep you fed and warm, and you, in turn, can keep me company.”
“Because I need a home. I need a colony of my kind,” said the worker.
“Then you haven’t accepted the lessons I’ve tried to teach,” answered the man. He looked to the worker with a sadness in his eyes, and they seemed to droop, pulling wrinkles down with them. The man’s tone became apologetic, but there was no malice in his bent-over posture or smile. He even reached into his other pocket for a handful of rice to drop next to the worker, saying it was warm and freshly cooked.
The worker could feel the vibrations of the man’s beating heart, for an animal so large pulsed the air with each of its breaths. Those vibrations felt full, at peace, swimming in happiness, and yet, oddly, also lonely. How could it be, the worker thought. How could such a full heart still think itself lacking?
With her perfect vision, the worker could not see that those thumps reaching her were beating out a clearer reflection of her than the lake itself.
Even though guilt rang through her that night as she slept, the worker knew she would have to leave this place. She sat up and looked over to the cabin, where she saw the flickering of a fire from under the door. Love and warmth drifted out from that house, the worker was certain of that, but she also knew that this was not her home.
The worker decided to kneel and pray to this new word she had learned of, this God that seemed to be in everything around. The worker kept it simple and said that if God wanted her to stay, she would. If she did, however, her ache for home would pester her mind, hollow her out and gray her days.
A wind blew that night, the first time the worker had ever felt breezes under a starlit sky. As if in on the cosmic joke, the stars took turns to wink, and then kept quiet as a single petal flew through the darkened sky. The petal landed right in the honey, leaning up against the walls of rice and sugar to make a perfect ramp.
The ant crawled onto the petal, feeling its tenderness and pulsing life, and then thanked it for its sacrifice as it began sinking into the stickiness. She crawled over the barrier, down the stump, and began her march to the other side of the lake.
nineteen
Surrender