This is the story I opened this past Sunday’s homily with. It is a version of a traditional Sufi tale as adapted by the drama group at All Souls Church in Washington, D.C.

High in a far off mountain, a little spring sprang from a hidden source. It flowed down the mountain over all different kinds of terrain, sometimes leaping and bubbling, sometimes drifting lazily or going underground. But, it was never stopped by any obstacle that might have gotten in its way, until one day it reached the edge of a vast desert.

“Just one more step,” it said, “one more obstacle. Nothing has ever stopped me from flowing. I will overcome this obstacle too.”

So the stream flung itself at the desert. But, each time it did so its waters simply disappeared, vanishing into nothingness, swallowed up by the dry hot sand. But, if it was its destiny to cross that desert, it would surely find a way.

“The wind can cross the desert,” it declared, “and so can the stream! I know I must cross this desert, but every time I try, the sand swallows me up! No matter how hard I fling myself at the desert, I don’t get any further!”

“You won’t be able to cross the desert using the old ways,” said the desert, “I am not like a boulder or a tree or a rock ledge. It is no use hurling yourself at the desert like that. You will never cross the sand like this, you will simply disappear or turn into marshland. You must trust the wind to carry you across the desert. You must let yourself be carried.”

“How can the wind carry me across the desert?” asked the stream.

“You must let yourself be absorbed into the wind, and then the wind will carry you.”

“No!” cried the stream. “I am a stream with a nature and identity of my own. I don’t want to lose myself by being absorbed into the wind.”

“That’s what the wind does. Trust me, and trust the wind. If you let yourself be absorbed by the wind, it will carry you across the desert and let you fall again on the other side to be a stream again.”

“But I won’t be the same stream I am now. I won’t be this particular stream.”

The desert understood the dilemma, but it also understood the mystery.

“You’re right,” said the desert.

“I am?”

“You won’t be the same stream you are now if you fling yourself into the sand and turn into a marsh. Let the wind carry you across the desert, and the real you, the real heart of you, the essence of everything you truly are, will be born again on the other side to flow a new course, to be a river that you can’t even imagine from where you are standing now.”

So the stream thought for a long while, but deep in its heart it had a memory of a wind that could be trusted and a horizon that was always out of reach but was always a new beginning. So the stream took a deep breath and surrendered itself to the power of the wind. and the wind took the vapor of the stream in strong and loving arms and took it high above the desert, far beyond the horizon, and let it fall again softly at the top of a new mountain, and the stream began to understand who it really was, and what it meant to be a stream.