Once upon a time there was a man who owned a very nice house. He loved the house a great deal, even though the insides were quite confusing and not at all well laid out, and even though the former owner was a lawyer and filled most of the rooms with arcane books in archaic languages and didn’t drink anything except camel’s milk.

Now, when he first bought the house, the yard had some shade trees, the sort of trees that grow upward and outward wildly, and eventually come to resemble shapes that no tree has any business imitating. And because the house was in the middle of the town, the neighbor children would often come around and play in the shade, swinging back and forth on an old tire tied up with a rope.

They became such a nuisance to him that the man decided to build a fence around the house to keep the children from spoiling his lawn and marking their crushes and flirtations with knives in the tree bark and leaving garbage to pile up in the gutters. But since the man had a job and had to be out giving it what for during the day, he couldn’t watch the children or prevent them from slipping through holes that naturally developed in the chain link.

Eventually, some seventeen years of this sort of thing having gone by, the man decided to replace the fence with a hedge. He went out one Saturday morning and bought a bunch of plants of different varieties, ripped down the fence, and planted the bushes and shrubs in its place.

In a few months, the hedge was a wonderful thing to behold. Thick and tall and full of thorns and the sort of insects you need to be a professor of insects to appreciate, it was effective in keeping out all but the most determined of the children. The man was very pleased, as the hedge had been his idea and good one at that, and as he watered and planted and fertilized, he became very enamored of the shrub, almost to the point where he forgot that he had a house, spending days at a time tending to the hedge.

In the meantime, the children found a new place to play, in a cul-de-sac near a polluted and altogether filthy river. They grew up, and a new generation of children was born, most who couldn’t even remember the well-manicured lawn and the tire swing. In fact, by the time these children came along, the hedge was so thick and so high it altogether hid the house and man behind it.

The man grew older and older while tending to his hedge. And before long, he began to collect arcane books in archaic languages, and developed a great affection for camel’s milk.

There was once a man who owned a horse. He loved this horse a great deal, and from that love grew a desire to do what was right for the horse. So one night while the horse was sleeping, he built a fence around it, a fence just large enough for the animal to move around a bit.

“There,” he said to himself, “now my horse is safe from danger.” He reasoned that it the less room there was to move, the less likely it was the horse he loved would hurt itself.

As time went on, he began to erect more elaborate safeguards around the horse. Finally, the day arrived that he dug a bomb shelter, led the horse inside, hobbled its legs, and began to feed it through a tube.

The neighbors looked on with mild disgust, but it was not after all their horse. So they went about their business.

It wasn’t long, however, that a thief - having caught a glance of the horse in the bomb shelter one night whilst sneaking through the man’s yard - decided to steal the horse. Steal it he did, nursing it back to health in a faraway land.

Years later a lady from the horse’s old town was traveling to that faraway land and recognised the animal galloping through a field. She wondered, as she travelled back to her town, who had actually loved the horse: the man who dug the bomb shelter for it, or the man who had stolen it in the middle of the night.

Sometimes I wonder if I could possibly be more stupid. I say things I don’t mean, I mean things but then don’t say them, I screw up, I doubt, I meander, I procrastinate, and I beat myself up verbally and publically.

You must think I’m quite the loser right now. I would ask that you simply agree with me: I don’t want to hear otherwise.

Let me tell you a story. There was once a man who enjoyed shopping, and as he was shopping, he noticed the most lovely antique camera. The most lovely expensive camera he had ever seen. In fact, it was so expensive, he would have to sell everything he had to buy it. And so, after flirting with the idea for a while, he decided it was more prudent to have that thing he wanted than to have all the other things that suddenly seemed dull beside it.

So it was that he came to own the camera. And he used it, and was happy for a while. But (as there always must be a “but” in these stories) as it turns out, the camera was imperfect: the photographs it took were smudged in places, and grainy in others. On the bus one day, he began to wonder if he had done the right thing - he had, after all, sold his car.

As he walked home, it stopped raining - it was raining, you see - sunlight breaking through the clouds, reflecting off nearby apartment buildings. He took the camera out to take a picture. Being something of a goof, he forgot to put the strap around his neck, and as usually happens when one forgets to put ones strap around ones neck, he stepped back to get a better view of the buildings, and tripped.

The camera went flying up, and his heart stopped for a moment. But he righted himself and caught it just before it would have smashed itself into little pieces on the pavement.

When his heart started again, he began to walk home, until it hit him. The imperfections, suddenly, seemed so very small, and the sacrifices.

dan

Before there was anything, there was nothing. But in the the nothing that was, the One who is not one dwelled by himself, happy, in no want of anything. In a moment that was not a moment, he began to draw pictures in his mind of a palace, a place for him to show who he was.

And one day before the were days, he made it. He spoke the picture he had drawn in his mind, and his palace was breathed into existance. Filling it with beautiful creatures, he looked at what he had made, and called it good. Finally, he made a man from the leftover dirt that was piled up against a wall, and gave him life. He made a woman from the man, and gave her to him.

He set the clockwork of time running, and watched his plan unfold. And for a while, it was good. The man and the woman had many children, and they filled the temple. It happened, however, that a great evil crept into that world, and the man and woman died. So it was that their children gradually forgot about the One who is not one, and made their own gods from the bricks of the temple and worshipped them.

As they worshipped, the One who is not one granted their wishes, and the spirits that they reverenced began to exist.

Not long after the people of the temple had invented all the gods they wished, the One who is not one called a meeting of all the gods.

He sat on his throne in a hall high above the temple, and the gods the people worshipped gathered around his table.

“My creations have forgotten me,” he said, and his voice filled the hall.

“They worship us instead!” spoke one of the lesser gods. “They worship what they can see: the sun.” For he was Nadir, the sun god.

“You have no power but what I have given you,” the One who is not one said.

The sun god grinned. “But how are they to know that?”

The One who is not one grew angry, then, and raised his hand toward the sun. So it happened that the sun did not rise the next morning. Terrified, the people of the temple cried out to Nadir, but Nadir was powerless to help them as hard as he tried.

After six, no, seven days of darkness, they remembered the One who is not one, and called upon him to make the sun rise. The next day, the sun rose as it had before, and the people worshipped the One who is not one, and left the other gods.

However, the generation that came after mocked the story of the seven days of darkness, calling it a foolish fable, and returned to the worship of their fathers’ gods.

“See?” another of the lesser gods said, sitting around the table of the One who is not one. “They worship what they know: death.” For he was Draknor, the god of death.

Again, the One who is not one grew exceedingly angry, and pointed a finger at the king of the people of the temple. The king died in front of his shrine to Draknor, and the people of the temple mourned greatly. Yet, the One who is not one had mercy on the king and his people, and sent a great prophet into their midst. The great prophet cried out to the One who is not one; six, even seven times he cried out, and with a gasp, the king came back to life, and sat up on his deathbed. Seeing this, the people of the temple fell down and worshipped the One who is not one, and left the other gods.

Not long after, a generation was born that did not remember the seven days of darkness, or the seven cries of the great prophet. They turned to the gods of their great-grandfathers, and no longer bowed to the One who is not one.

“How long will you bear with these ungrateful wretches?” cried another of the lesser gods from around the table. “They worship what they see: gold.” For he was the Kala’am, the god of possessions.

The One who is not one saw that it was true, and grew angry with the people of the temple with a wrath fiercer than any the lesser gods had seen. He sent a great fire into temple, a fire so great that almost all of the men and woman died, and their goods and money with them. For days the fire raged, and then it had grown not six, but seven times hotter than when it had started, the last few of the people of the temple saw they were doomed, and finally prayed to the One who is not one to save them from the flames.

The One who is not one heard their prayers, sweeping down into the temple he had made, as rain. He comforted those that were left, and wrote down what he had done on the walls of temple so that the people of the temple would never forget the seven days of darkness, or the seven cries of the great prophet, or the sevenfold strenth of the fire.

They did not forget, and from that day on, the people of the temple no longer worshipped the lesser gods. Six generations later, however, the people of the temple rarely read the walls, and the few that did hardly believed the stories. They grew wealthy again, and strong, and prosperous. A day came where they bowed before the One who is not one, but did not think they needed him, or that he could see their minds.

“It is useless,” another of the gods seated at his table said. “They worship what they can see: themselves.” For he was Sharmii, the god of self.

The One who is not one stood, then, and spoke. “I am tired of the people of the temple and their pride!” He purposed in his mind to rebuild the temple, rebuild it into a perfect temple, in which evil would not be known or spoken of.

So it happened that the One who is not one came down into the temple, and stopped time. He set his throne in the middle of the temple and began to judge the people of the temple according to what they had done. Those that had died gathered there also, both the good and the bad.

And the One who is not one divided the people into those who had trusted him, and those who had not. Those who had not trusted him were sent to a place outside the temple, a place so horrible is has no name; but he kept those he loved in the temple.

Standing, the One who is not one spoke words that no human can know, and swept his arms around the temple. All was made new, then, the temple, and those in it, and from those words on they knew no evil, and no pain, for the temple was a place of pure joy.

The One who is not one at last looked toward the pitiful gods of the people’s creation, and sent them to be with those who had trusted them.

Then, after the anything that had been, the One who is not one sat down in the temple that is not a temple, to enjoy what he done. In a moment that was not a moment, he began to show the people who he was, and what he had done.

And they agreed: all that he had done was very good.