The Boy and the Drum

I read this story and I can not stop thing about it so I would like to share with you my dear friends and family.

There is a boy who wants a drum, but his mother can't afford a drum, and so, sadly , she gaves him a stick. Though he doesn't know what to do with it, he shuffles home and begins to play with this stick. Just then, he encounters an old woman trying to light her wood stove . The boy freely gives her the stick. She lights her fire , makes some bread, and in return she gives him half a loaf. Walking on, the boy comes upon a potter's wife whose child is crying from hunger. The boy freely gives her the bread. In gratitude, she gives him a pot. Though he does not know what to do with it, he carries it along the river , where he see a washer man and his wife quarreling because the wife broke their one pot. The boy gives them the pot . In return , they give him a coat . Since the boy is not cold , he carries the coat until he canes to a bridge, where a man is shivering . Riding to on a horse, the man was attacked and robbed of everything but his horse. The boy freely gives him the coat. Humbled , the man gives him his horse . Not knowing how to ride , the boy walks the horse into town, where he meets a weeding party with musicians . The bridegroom and his family are all sitting under a tree with long faces. According to custom, the bridegroom is to enter the procession on a horse, which has not show up . The boy freely gives him the horse. Relieved , the bridegroom asks what he can do for the boy . Seeing the drummer surrounded by all his drums, the boy asks for the smallest drum, which the musician gladly gives him.

This story serves as a good example that, underneath our trouble, the true nature of generosity is only fully visible if we let the story........... Wherever it is unfold. If we limit the old teaching story to the boy asking for one thing and his mother bringing him another, we have a lesson in not getting what we want, but accepting what we are given. If we end the story when the boy gives the woman the stick , we have a moment of altruism or sacrifice , depending on how we look at it. If we end the story when the woman gives the boy half a loaf of bread, it becomes  a lesson in barter and fair exchange , tradeing  what's timely and of use. But if we let the story take it's full and natural course , we are given something quite different.

For the longer we let relationships unfold, the more we see how everything goes together and how answering the needs of others depends on how we accept what we are given as unexpected medicine, even if it's not what we want.

Often , this courage to wait and let the fabric of the Universe reveal itself  dissolves our individual sense of ownership into a sense of guardianship over gifts that no one owns. In this larger fabric , gifts rush through the Universe, moving from one place of need to another in a pattern too big to really see, in much the same way that blood rushes to a place of injury in the body .  This humble story , allowed to unfold, let's us recognize that the unexpected gift that comes our way might not be for us. It might be that, like the boy we are called to carry it to another. We might be but one exchange along the way and one exchange from realizing how we are all connected.