finding the true world behind the imaginary one

okay. friends. let me tell you a story, taken from the book (which you should all read) called the world to come by dara horne.

"Two children were once abandoned in a forest, a boy and a girl. A blind beggar found them there, but he could not lead them out of the forest. Instead he gave them bread. The children took it, and the beggar offered them a blessing: that they should be like him.

The next day, the lost children were hungry again. A deaf beggar offered them bread. He, too, left them with the blessing that they should be like him. By the seventh day, seven beggars had found and fed them: first the blind one and the deaf one, then a stutterer, then one with a crooked neck, then a hunchback, then one with missing hands, and finally one with a missing leg. Each of them offered the same blessing: that the children should be like them.

Years passed, and the children grew up. They found a path to a town and joined a roving group of beggars, "going over the houses," begging for alms. When the children were finally old enough, the beggars decided that they should marry each other, and the children agreed.

So the beggars prepared the wedding hall in the forest...They dug out a large grave...and covered it up with wood and earth, and they all went down inside it and made a wedding there for the two children...During the seven days of the wedding feast, the children wanted to see the seven beggars who had helped them when they were abandoned in the forest. On each day, they asked for one of the beggars, and on each day, one of the beggars appeared. Each one denied his handicap and told them many stories, giving the children the wedding gift of becoming just like him.

On the first day, the blind beggar arrived at the wedding feast.

"Do you think I'm blind?" the blind beggar asked. "I'm not blind at all. It's just that all of eternity is nothing more than an eyeblink to me." He then told them that he was once in a shipwreck, and he and the other survivors decided to tell each other stories - the oldest experiences they could think of, their very earliest memories of life. The others told many stories, but the blind beggar told the oldest one of all: he remembered nothingness, the place before stories. And he gave the children his gift: a long life.

On the second day, the deaf beggar arrived.

"Do you think I'm deaf?" the deaf beggar asked. "I'm not deaf at all. It's just that it isn't worth hearing a whole world full of people complaining about what they lack." He told the story of a wealthy country where people believed they were living "the good life." The country had a garden of riches, of so many sights and smells and sounds that the people in the country literally lost their senses, spoiled by everything they had already seen and heard and smelled and tasted and touched, until the deaf beggar taught them how to use their sense again. And he gave the children his gift; a good life.

On the third day, the stuttering beggar arrived.

"Do you think I'm a stutterer?" the stuttering beggar asked. "I'm not a stutterer at all. It's just that all the words of the world that aren't praise will never be worth saying." He told a story of a mountain with a spring emerging from a rock, and the heart of the world - because everything, the stutterer said, has a heart, including the world - which stood thousands of miles away. The heart and the spring yearned for each other constantly, but the spring could only live through the time the heart gave it, the days the heart created by singing songs and riddles to the spring. And the beggar gave the children his gift: songs and riddles, to use to create time.

And so the crippled beggars continued appearing at the wedding, one after another each day. Nothing was what it seemed. Each of their defects turned out to be strange gifts, talents for finding the true world behind the imaginary one and for picking up the pieces of a broken world."