History of the Recent World

In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth and called it good. And he created creatures of the sea, and animals on the land, and people who would tend the earth with great care and love, for they would know that it was only a temporary gift for them to enjoy and so was most precious.

One day, the earth began to weep, great storms of tears and ocean waves that ripped through towns and villages, displacing many human beings and even taking a great many human lives. The earth was weeping because the people had forgotten their task. They had become busy caring for only themselves, forgetting the precious gift that supported their very breath.

The humans took notice. They began to turn their attention back to the gift they had been given in the beginning. In doing so, they found the most profound gift of all. They began to recognize that their lives were not their own. They belonged to a much greater force that was in them, and yet beyond them. They began to see that everyone, all nations, all races, every sort and kind, were part of this force. And they were healed of their loneliness. They began to see each other with new eyes.

The planet breathed a sigh of relief, and began to cool down.

The Fisherman’s Song

“No,” he said. “I will not fish for people. People are smelly.” The fisherman spoke to the water, where his reflection was scowling back at him. “I am a fisherman, I fish for fish.”

And then, inexplicably, his boat broke in two. He was sitting at the helm, and the next moment, he was hurled head-first into the water. Plunged into the depths of the sea, a great fish nibbled at his ear. “Fish for people,” the fish said, with a kind of giggle way down in its throat.

“Of course YOU would say that,” the fisherman said, swimming to the surface.

“Fish for people,” the fish repeated, and swam away, giving its fishy tail an extra wag.

The fisherman opened his mouth as he reached the surface, but no air came. A big hunk of dry bread lodged itself in his mouth.

Squawking, a seagull was plunging toward him to retrieve its bread. The fisherman spat out the bread and swam to shore.

Lugging himself onto a dock, a small child wandered up to him, staring at him in all of his soaked clothes. A quizzical look came over the child’s face, and the man said, “Don’t worry, just a little fight with the fish, that’s all, my lad.”

“What kind of fight?”

“A fish fight.”

“Oh,” the boy said. “My brother gets into fist fights.”

“Those are different,” the man replied, standing on the dock, now.

“Look, why don’t you be a good lad and find me a towel?” The boy saw that the man really needed one.

He ran quickly to where his mother was sitting on the shore, and the fisherman watched him pointing back at him. The mother handed the boy a towel, and he came running back at full speed.

The boy, panting heavily for breath, gave the towel to the man, who dried off as much as he could and handed the towel back.

“What’s a fish fight?” the boy asked.

“It’s when you know something is true in your heart, and you don’t like the truth. So you fight with it.”

“What is true?” asked the boy.

“If people were like you, I would love all of them. But they aren’t. They get mean and selfish and smelly.”

“They do?” the boy asked. He’d never met anyone mean or selfish or smelly. But he knew that grown-ups had secrets he didn’t know about yet.

“Yes, they do,” the man replied.

“Are you mean and selfish and smelly?” the boy asked.

The man laughed. “I suppose I am,” he said.

“Then why don’t you love the other people who are mean and selfish and smelly?”

The fisherman rubbed his chin for a while, thinking. And though he hadn’t thought of it for years, a tune came to him. It was a song his mother sang to him so many years ago. He began to hum it, hesitating, but then he opened his mouth and began to sing it. All the words coming back as if he’d heard it only yesterday.

The song of the waves is the song of the heart.
You don’t know its end; you don’t know its start.
But listen always deep down within;
You’ll find the fishes are singing.
You’ll find the fishes are singing.

They sing, “Ho, diddly dum diddly dum do;
Ho, diddly dum diddly dum do.” It’s silly, I know,
But it’s what they do,
Singin’, “Ho, diddly dum diddly dum do.”

No one quite knows what it all means,
Except that the heart is an ocean of things,
So vast and wide and deep down and blue,
It’s where the fishes are singing.
It’s where the fishes are singing.

They sing, “Ho, diddly dum diddly dum do;
Ho, diddly dum diddly dum do.” It’s silly, I know,
But I tell you, it’s true;
Singin’, “Ho, diddly dum diddly dum do.”

When the man had finished singing, the boy came over and took the man’s hand.

“Wanna come see my mom?” the boy asked. The man said he would like that. They walked together down the pier.

“You know,” the man told the boy. “You are a good fisherman.”

The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Sure,” he replied, remembering that adults sometimes say strange things.

The man, who was considering what the boy said about loving the other smelly people, decided that fishing for people may be more like catching fish than he’d thought. He decided it might be more like how it was when he threw out his wide net, and he saw that he could catch a good many fish that day -- or he saw that maybe he wouldn’t catch any.

Either way, he liked the feel of the rope and the splashing sound it made when it hit the water. He liked how the boat gently rocked and the seagulls called across the waves. He felt the peace of the sea in his bones. Now, holding this small boys’ hand, he could feel that same peace. It was the kind of peace that said everything was going to be alright after all. Fish or no fish, everything always turns out okay.

“Maybe be the fish are right,” the man said out loud to the boy.
“The singing fish?” the boy asked.
And then they were at the feet of the boy’s mother, and the two adults were shaking hands and making a fuss over the wet towel.