The Jeweled Dragon

For Dillon

In the beginning of time, there was a fierce dragon who lived on a mountain overlooking a small town. He had teeth of great strength, enough to crush a man in one bite, and jewels on his wings, which were believed to give him magic powers over the people.

The town grew smaller and smaller, as some were lured into the clutches of the dragon, and others moved away, hoping to avoid this horrible fate.

But there lived a young woman at the outskirts of town who was always entranced by the behavior of this dragon. Even though her own uncle had been draw into the dragon’s den, and had been devoured, she had a certain respect for the dragon and its great power.

For she knew that under the dragon’s fierce power must also lay great vulnerability. She knew that if the dragon had used his power correctly, that there would have been no terror in the village and that the dragon and the people would have gotten along peacefully together. How she knew this was a mystery to her, but it was something she never doubted.

Her father, who lived with her, lived in terror that one day, his daughter would be captured by the dragon’s magic. He wasn’t so afraid for himself, for he had a kind of level-headedness that kept people like himself alive – so far anyway.

One spring day, when the daffodils were blooming and the little children were out playing in the streets after a long winter, the dragon’s thunderous roar echoed down though the valley. The young woman and her father, who had gathered in the kitchen for conversation, looked at each other knowingly. The dragon was on the prowl. Whenever he was ready for a kill, be began by shaking up the valley with his roars and with the terrible crashing sounds of trees falling in the wake of his lashing tail.

On the opposite mountain, there was a cave to which the people fled when this kind of thing happened. This time, however, despite her father’s pitiful pleas, the young woman decided to stay. The father wept and wept, begging her to save her life, but at last, realizing it was hopeless, he fled for his own life.

Soon, the woman realized that there was soft flute music coming from where the dragon usually made his terrible noises. She followed this sound until she came to the foot of the mountain. She stopped there, conscious that she may be the subject of some kind of spell.

She picked up a stone and held it in her hand, and she told herself that if she kept squeezing the stone, she would be okay. For stones in her country had magical properties, and this, she believed, would protect her from the dragon’s power.

She began her ascent up the mountain, twigs snapping underfoot, and she was aware of the feeling of being watched.

When she came to the foot of the dragon’s cave, she couldn’t believe her eyes. There was a little puppy, yapping up at her. It was fluffy and white and looked like it had gotten lost. She smiled and moved forward, but something stopped her. She squeezed the stone in her hand. This was the dragon in disguise! Without hesitating, and with great force, she hurled her stone at the dog. It hit the animal between the eyes and it fell down, dead.

The dragon awoke, then, within the dead form of the dog, its terrible wings bursting out first, then its yellow scaly body, then its awful lashing neck and head with flaming eyes and a red, forked tongue. It held her gaze for an instant until it, too, fell down, dead.

The young woman, feeling a huge relief but also a heaviness for having done away with so magnificent a creature, sat down and wept. Even though the dragon was murderous, she knew that all beings hold the seed of truth in their hearts, and she was sorry for having to slay what might have been, given different circumstances, a magic dragon that inspired hopes and dreams and made both children and adults delight in being alive.

She wept, her tears splashing onto the stone at the opening of the cave. Somewhere, in the heart of the dead dragon, the sound of the tears of the young woman began to echo the falling tears of the dragon’s own great-grandmother. His great-grandmother was one of those awe-inspiring dragons you read about in fairy tales, who are friends to humans and bring only good fortune. The sound of these tears echoed back through time and space until it cracked open the heart of the dead dragon just before he was about to eat his very first human many moons ago.

The dragon was younger then and more light-hearted. He really began eating villagers out of sport, being unaware of the kind of human terror he was inspiring. But when his heart cracked open, and he saw for the first time the terror in the man’s eyes before him, he backed away from the man and withdrew into his cave.

The whole history of the town changed, then. The dragon was reclusive, a kind of shy treasure who revealed himself on full moon nights only, when he’d fly over the town, looking for food offerings, which people would leave in their yards, hoping to get a glimpse of him.

And the young woman, her father and uncle all lived together, the men telling tales of fierce dragons of yore. Whenever they would tell these stories, the young woman would get a twinkle in her eye, because she knew the time past, when she slayed the very dragon who now romanced the hearts of many.

She knew, too, when she was an older woman, that she would lay down one day and become the great-grandmother dragon, whose jeweled wings and flashing eyes would be the source of poems and songs of adoration, and that when people came into her presence, they would feel again their own dreams awakening within them, and their own fierceness would lie down in exchange for the magic before them.

How she knew this, she did not know, except that her mother, who had once given her a magical stone when she was a little girl, still spoke to her in her dreams, even though her mother lived three mountains away.

And that is how it went, and the village grew and grew until it had peopled the whole valley. For people came there from far and wide to be in the presence of this magic dragon, which they knew in their hearts was all of their hopes and dreams manifest in physical form so that they could see how splendid they really were. And they named the town a name that cannot be spoken, for the name itself is the name of this magic that is in the heart of every being. This magic cannot be conveyed in words but can only be experienced if one is to truly understand.

The Man with the Sequoia Heart

For Finn, on His 50th Birthday

In the morning, when he awoke, there was his heart, as big as the Universe, whose edges went beyond the finite understanding of the mind and so seemed to burst the very seams of his being.
He felt like a small cell in an enormous Sequoia, whose roots and branches, he knew, fed him, though he could not see them nor grasp their outline. And he felt the Sequoia speak his name -- it was a vibration that went through him, without words, but as the touch of the Infinite -- as if the Sequoia were his mother, and she was naming him for the first time (though she had always known his name.)

He knew, then, that all of life is this naming, this calling forth to being from what has always been. And as he looked at all of the other beings around him, he knew that they, too, had been called forth to continue the sacred art of creating from that which was already created.

Once he realized this, there was nothing he could do but to pick up his tools and begin carving the heart of the great Sequoia, following the shapes that were resting there since before the beginning. And while it took the strength of every cell of his being to begin to carve this great Heart, he did it because he knew that his life depended on it and that all great names, when they are called, must step forward for themselves and for the beings who come after them.

As he began, he saw that as he carved the sacred Heart of the giant Sequoia, he carved new spaces in his own heart, in the exact shapes of the work he was making. And when he grew to be an old man, the art that had infused his entire life surrounded him like a giant forest of nymphs and unamed creatures, and he saw, without a doubt, that the shapes he created in this world and the great, carved spaces of his heart were mirrors of each other. The shapes in this life had form, while the shapes in his heart had space.

He no longer felt that he was going to burst at the seams but understood, from his soil-stained toes to his unruly head of hair, that there was no difference between the Heart of the Mother Sequoia and his very own heart. And when his little grandchildren came to his place to play, they sat on his lap, feeling the strength of that Sequoia and knowing they were in the arms of a great being. Not knowing how to name this, exactly, they turned to his works of art, for every great being is known by what springs up around them.

This man's legacy to his children and those who came after him was work carved with such gentle application of attention and affection that you could not doubt the enormous love and tenderness of the artist, and if you peered long enough at one of the pieces, you would see the Great Mother Sequoia in each work, laughing with delight and whispering her blessings to all who would hear.