The Gift

 

In three days, Jupiter and Saturn will be practically touching. She knows what that means. She needs to increase the pace. She still has more than 60 miles to go, and the walking is slow. She should have left weeks earlier, but she needed time to prepare The Gift. That was delicate work, and painstaking.  She had to prepare the binding, the paper, the ink, and then, every word had to be copied, one by one, and checked, and double checked. Now, there is no time to waste. She needs to walk night and day to arrive in time to deliver The Gift.

She has been watching the two planets come together for weeks now. Jupiter, the planet of miracles. Saturn, the planet of aspirations. The last time they were this close was four hundred years ago, She missed that one. That was before she was trained in The Arts. And those who were trained were too feeble to make the journey and deliver The Gift. The world paid a terrible price for this failure: four hundred years of oppression, war, famine, and, now, disease. 

The next opportunity will not come for another 80 years. That will be too late. If she is still alive, she will be too old. Even the most advanced training in The Arts can only hold off death for so long. And 80 years isn’t enough time to pass on the training. So it has to be now.

She has calculated the location of the gift giving with great precision, and had her calculations verified by the elders. She knows where The Gift is to be given, and when, but not to whom. She has to trust that this will be revealed in time. And that she will get there in time. The alternatives to this are too painful to contemplate.

She checks her bearings one more time. She is on course to the mark: 31.7054° N, 35.2024° E. She thinks of it as The Location, because the name of the town means nothing to her. A tiny speck in the middle of noplace. Bethlehem. A place that could change the course of humanity. If she can deliver The Gift. And if the wisdom it contains is received.

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Spiritual questions:

• With what gifts have you been entrusted?
• To whom do you need to give them?
• If you don't give them, who will?
•  Why are you waiting?

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December 17, 2020 - This was written with the Roundhouse Writing Group in Santa Cruz, Guatemala, remotely from Guanajuato, Mexico. The writing prompt for the  session was: In three days, Jupiter and Saturn will be practically touching. [blank] knows what that means. 

This is one of my Parables for the Spiritual but not Religious Series.

The photograph is by titouan russo and made available through Flickr and Creative Commons, some rights may be reserved.

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