But as suddenly as the thunderstorm came it is gone. A few single drops of rain fall, and then the sun breaks through the clouds. To every straw and leaf pearly drops of water cling. Again the birds are singing, and in the pools in the woods the fishes are leaping, while mosquitoes fly in swarms above the water. On a boulder on the beach sits Summer. He is a powerful man; his arms and legs are muscular. His hair is wet from the shower. He stretches himself; he and all the nature around him seem rejuvenated by the bath. Summer is strength and fertility, the crowning of hopes.
Sweet was the fragrance of the field of flowering clover. The bees flew across it; in the center lay some stones. In Viking times it had been a holy place. Blackberry brambles now covered the altar stone. Here the queen bee and her court built a castle of wax and filled it with honey. Only Summer and his wife saw it; and truly, it was for their sake that the offering was laid on the altar stone.
When the sun set, the evening sky shone more golden than any church cupola, and from the pale darkness of the summer night the moon looked down.
Weeks went by, and days. The farmers began to harvest, and their sharp scythes glistened in the sunlight as they reaped the grain. The branches of the apple trees bent toward the ground, heavy with red and yellow fruit. The hops smelled sweetly. Under the hazelnut bushes, filled with nuts, rested a man and a woman: Summer and his grave and beautiful wife.
“What richness,” she sighed, “a blessed homely wealth, and yet I long for something else, I do not know what it is. Rest? Peace? No, it is neither, and more than both, that I wish for! Look, they are plowing again. Man always wants more; he is never satisfied. The storks are flying in flocks now, following the plowman. The bird from Egypt that carried us through the air. Do you remember when we, as children, came here to the north? We brought sunshine and flowers and the green woods. The wind is turning them yellow and brown now, like southern trees; but here they do not bear golden fruits.”
“You shall see them,” said Summer. “Be happy!” And he spread out his arms toward the woods, and its leaves turned red and golden. The fruit of the wild rose shone red on its brambles and the elderberries hung like black grapes from the trees. The wild chestnuts fell out of their blackish-green shells; and deep in the forest the violets flowered once again.
The queen of the year grew more and more silent and thoughtful. “The evening air is cold,” she said, and her cheeks grew pale. “The night mist is damp! I long for the land of my childhood.”
She watched the storks fly south, following each one with her eyes until it disappeared. She looked up at the empty nest; a cornflower grew in one of them, as though the nest were there for its protection; then the sparrows came visiting.
“The noble owners have left,” they mocked as they searched the nest for something eatable. “I guess they couldn’t take a bit of wind; it was too much for them, and so they left. Well, a pleasant journey is all I can wish them. Tweet!”
The leaves turned more and more yellow, and soon the tree would stand naked again. The harvest was over and the fall storms had begun. On a bed of yellow leaves lay the queen of the year; she looked toward the twinkling stars; the sun had set. Her husband stood near her. The wind rustled the leaves and she was gone. A butterfly, the last of the year, flew through the cold air.
From the sea drifted the wet and cold autumn fogs; the long nights of winter had begun. The king of the year stood with snow-white hair, and the first snow of the year covered the fields. The church bell rang the joyous message of Christmas.
“The bells are ringing to celebrate the birth of the New Year,” said the king of the year. “Soon they will come, the new king and queen, and I shall be allowed to rest, as she does now. Rest and find peace in the stars.”
Out in the forest, among the pine and spruce trees, walked the Christmas angel; she consecrated those trees that were to take part in the feast.
“May you bring happiness and joy,” said the king of the Old Year. The last few weeks had made an ancient man of him; his hair was no longer white but silver, like the frost. “Soon I shall rest. The new rulers are now receiving their scepter and their crown.”
“But still the power is yours, not theirs,” said the angel of Christmas. “You must rule, not rest. Let the snow lay like a warm blanket over the young grain. Learn to bear the burden it is to rule, while others are praised and honored; and yet you are still master. Learn to be forgotten while you live! The hour of your freedom will come when Spring comes.”
“And when does Spring come?” asked Winter.
“When the first storks arrive,” answered the angel.
With silver hair and snow-white beard, Winter sat and waited; old but not decrepit, strong as the winter storms and the all-powerful ice. He sat on his snowbank and looked toward the south, as Winter had done the year before.
The ice on lakes and fjords groaned and the snow creaked when you walked on it. The children were skating. The ravens and crows looked very decorative on the white background. Everything was still, not a wind stirred. Winter clenched his hands, and the thickness of the ice grew by inches, every night.
The sparrows came flying out from town and asked, “Who is that old man over there?”
And the raven who sat on the fence post—it was either the same one as last year or his son—answered, “It is Winter. The old fellow is not dead as the calendar says. He is the guardian for the New Year, for Spring, who will soon be here.”
“When does Spring come?” asked the sparrows. “Then we will get a decent government, the last one was no good!”
Deep in thought, Winter nodded toward the naked, leafless forest, where every branch, every trunk, showed its graceful forms. An ice-cold mist covered all. Winter, the master of the world, was dreaming of his youth, his manhood. When the sun rose, the forest was clad in ice, the white frost decked each branch, each twig. It was Winter’s dream of Summer. The sunlight melted the ice, and it fell from the branches, down onto the snow.
“When is Spring coming?” asked the sparrows.
“Spring, Spring!” came the echo from the drifts of snow; and the sun grew warmer and warmer.
The snow was melting and the birds sang, “Spring is coming!”
The storks flew high in the air: the first of the year. On their backs rode two lovely children; the birds landed on a field. The children kissed the earth and embraced old man Winter, and like a mist he disappeared. The year’s story had ended!
“It is all very true,” said the sparrows. “And it is a pretty story, but that’s not what the calendar says, and that is what counts in his world.”
59
On the Last Day
The most sacred of all the days of our life is the day we die. It is holy, it is the great day of change, of transformation. Have you ever seriously thought about the hour that is certain to come and will be your last hour on earth?
There once was a man. He was “strong in the faith,” as they say. He was a warrior for God and His Word, a zealous servant of a zealous God. Death was now standing by his bed. Solemly Death looked at him and said: “The hour has come for you to follow me.” And he touched the man’s feet with his ice-cold hand and they turned cold. He touched his forehead, then his chest; the man’s heart ceased to beat and his soul followed the angel of Death.
But in the few seconds that passed between Death’s fingers touching his feet and his chest, the dying man experienced everything that life had given him. Like a great wave of the ocean, it engulfed him. He felt as you do when you stand on a mountaintop and can see the whole valley below you; or as on a starlit night, when with one glance you can take in the whole universe.
At such a moment the sinner trembles with fear. He has no one to lean on and he sinks into the void. The pious man leans on God and says with the innocence of a child: “Thy will be done.”
But this dying man had not a child’s faith, he had a man’s. He did not shiver as a sinner would have, for he knew that he had been faithful. His life had been guide
d by the strictest religious doctrines. He knew that millions of people walked the broad highway of sin that leads to the everlasting doom, and he would willingly have punished their bodies with fire and sword, as he knew their souls were destined to suffer eternally. His road was toward heaven, where the grace that had been promised him would open the great doors.
As his soul followed the angel of Death, he looked back for a moment at his own dead clay, this strange, now already foreign shell of his ego. They flew and they walked. They were in a gigantic hall or a forest, it was as if nature had been pruned, cut, formalized in squares and rows as in a French garden. Here a masquerade seemed to be taking place.
“This is humanity!” said the angel of Death.
They were wearing costumes. Not all the rich and mighty were dressed in silk and gold, nor were all the poor in ragged clothes. It was a strange masquerade. All the people partaking in it seemed to be hiding something under their clothes; everyone seemed to have something he felt ashamed of, but which the others wanted revealed, so they could see it. They tore at one another’s clothes, while at the same time everyone tried to protect his own secret. Every once in a while, peeping out from under a cloak or a robe would be the grinning head of an ape or a goat, or the slimy body of a snake or a fish.
That was the animal, the beast we all carry within us, which grows and becomes part of our bodies and wants to come out and be seen. And though everyone held his clothes about him as tightly as he could, the others tried to pull them aside, screaming and pointing. “Look! Look at her! Look at him!” Each revealed the other’s misery.
“And what kind of animal lives within me?” asked the dead man. The angel of Death pointed to a proud man who stood apart from the others. Above his head was a many-colored halo, but near the heart of the man the animal’s feet protruded! Peacock’s feet, and the halo was the bird’s tail.
As they proceeded on their journey the trees grew taller. In them sat strange birds that cried with human voices, “You, Death’s companion, do you remember us?” They were the evil thoughts, the evil desires he had had on earth.
For a moment the soul shivered in fear, for he did recognize the voices, his evil thoughts, the desires that now came to bear witness against him.
“In our flesh, in our evil nature, no goodness lives,” said the soul. “But my thoughts never became deeds! The world never saw their evil fruits!” He walked on in haste to escape the large black birds, but they circled about him in flocks, screaming so loudly that the whole world could hear them. He ran like a wounded deer, but now the ground seemed covered with sharp flint stones which cut and hurt his feet.
“Where do these sharp stones that lie like dead leaves on the earth come from?”
“Each one is a thoughtless word that you have uttered and which hurt your neighbor’s heart far more than they now hurt your feet.”
“I never thought about that,” admitted the soul of the dead man.
“Judge not and you shall not be judged!” The words rang through the heavens.
“We have all sinned,” whispered the soul, but then he said with a more forceful voice: “But I have kept the law and lived according to the gospels. I did try, I am not like the others.”
At last they arrived at the gate of heaven; the angel who guarded it asked: “Who are you? Tell me the creed you believed in and what deeds you have done.”
“I have kept all the commandments. I have humbled myself in the eyes of the world. I have hated evil and those men who were evil. Those who walked the broad highway of sin I have pursued with fire and sword and would do so today if I could.”
“You are one of the followers of Mohammed?” asked the angel.
“No! Never!” shouted the soul.
“He that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, the Son of God has said. It cannot be he you worship. Are you one of the Children of Israel who believes as Moses did: ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?’ A son of Israel whose jealous God cares only for His people?”
“I am a Christian.”
“That I would not have guessed either from your faith or from your deeds. Christ teaches redemption, love, and mercy.”
“Mercy, mercy!” The words rang through the eternal never ending heavens, and the doors opened for the soul to enter.
But the light that came from inside was so sharp, so penetrating, that the soul drew back and did not dare enter. The music was so soft, so sweet, so touching, that no human tongue could describe it. The soul bowed down lower and lower as the godly wisdom entered him; and at last he felt what he had never felt before: the burden of his own arrogance, hardness, and sin. Now he finally understood.
“What good I did in the world I did because I could not do otherwise, but the evil—that I chose to do myself.”
The soul was blinded by the heavenly light; weak and faint, it fell, it was not yet wise enough to enter the kingdom of heaven. He remembered his own belief in God’s justice and righteousness and did not dare to beg for mercy.
At that moment he received God’s grace, His unexpected mercy.
God’s heaven was everywhere in the endless space, God’s love filled everything.
“Holy, glorious, loving, and eternal is the human soul,” said a voice and the angels sang the message.
Every one of us will on the last day and hour of life here on earth draw back in fear and humility from the glory and splendor of heaven. We will fall; but His grace will support us and our souls will fly in new orbits, nearer and nearer the eternal light, His mercy will give us the strength to understand the final, godly, eternal wisdom.
60
It Is Perfectly True!
“It is a monstrous story!” said a hen. She lived in a part of the town far away from where the event had taken place. “It is a horrible story and it has happened in a henhouse. I am glad that I am not sleeping alone on the perch tonight. I would not dare close my eyes!”
And then she told the story. The other hens were so shocked that their feathers stood up, and the rooster’s comb fell down. It is perfectly true!
But we will start at the beginning and that took place in another corner of the town in a henhouse. The sun had just set and all the hens had flown up on their roost. Among them was a white-feathered hen with stumpy legs; she laid an egg every day and was very respectable. Now as she sat down on her perch she picked at her feathers a bit, and one little feather fell out.
“There it went,” she said. “The more I pick myself, the more beautiful I will become.” This was said for fun, for she was a cheerful soul, though otherwise—as I have already said—very respectable.
It was dark on the perch; the hens sat roosting side by side, but the hen that sat nearest to the one who had lost a feather wasn’t asleep. She had heard what had been said and she hadn’t; and that is a very wise thing to do if you want to live in peace with your neighbors. But still she could not help telling the hen next to her what she had heard.
“Did you hear what was said? I won’t mention names, but there is a hen among us who is going to pluck her feathers off just to look more attractive. If I were a rooster I would despise her!”
Right above the henhouse lived an owl family; and they have sharp ears. They heard every word that the hen had said and the mother owl rolled her eyes and beat her wings. “Don’t listen, but I suppose you couldn’t help but hear it. I heard it with my own ears and one has to hear a lot before they fall off. There is one of the hens in the henhouse that has so forgotten all decency and propriety that she is sitting on the perch and picking off all her feathers, while the rooster is looking at her.”
“Prenez garde aux enfants!” said the father owl. “It is not fit for the children to hear!”
“But I will tell our neighbor about it,” said the mother. “She is such a courteous owl. I hold her in the highest esteem.” And away she flew.
“Tu-whit! Tu-whoo!” both the owls hooted, and so loudly that the pigeons could not help hearing it. “Have
you heard, have you heard! Tu-whoo! There is a hen that has plucked all her feathers off for the rooster’s sake. She will freeze to death, if she hasn’t already, tu-whoo!”
“Where? Where?” cooed the pigeons.
“In the neighboring yard! I have almost seen it with my own eyes. It is a most indecent story, but it is perfectly true.”
“True, true, every word,” cooed the pigeons, and repeated the story in their own henhouse. “There is a hen—some say that there are two—that have plucked all their feathers off in order to look different and in that way gain the attention of the rooster. They have played a dangerous game, for one can catch a cold that way and die of fever; and they are dead, both of them!”
“Wake up! Wake up!” crowed the cock, and flew up on the fence. Sleep was still in his eyes, but he crowed anyway. “Three hens have died of unrequited love for a rooster! They have plucked all their feathers off. It is a nasty story. I won’t keep it, pass it on!”
“Pass it on, pass it on,” piped the bats. And the hens clucked and the roosters crowed: “Pass it on, pass it on.” And in this manner the story went from henhouse to henhouse until it arrived back at the very place where it had started.
“There are five hens, so it is said, that have all plucked their feathers off to prove which one of them had become thinnest because of unhappy love for the rooster. Then they pecked each other until blood flowed and they all fell down dead! It’s a shame for their families and a great loss to their owner.”
The hen who had lost the first little feather naturally did not recognize the story; and as she was a decent and respectable hen, she said, “I despise those hens! But there are more of that kind! Such things must not be kept secret! I will do whatever I can to have it printed in the newspaper, then the whole country will hear about it. And that is what those hens and their families deserve.”
And it was published in the newspaper and it is perfectly true that one little feather can become five hens!