"Crito, I owe a
cock to Asclepius. Will you remember to pay
the debt?'
---Socrates, after taking
the hemlock.
Once upon a time when
there were still Indians, Gypsies, bears, and bad
men in the woods of Tennessee where I played and,
more important still, there was no death, a promise
was made to me. One endless summer afternoon
my father sat in the eternal shade of a peach tree,
carving on a seed he had picked up. With
increasing excitement and covetousness I watched
while, using a skill common to all omnipotent
creators, he fashioned a small monkey out of the
seed. All my vagrant wishes and desires
disciplined themselves and came to focus on that
peach-seed monkey. If only I could have it, I
would possess a treasure which could not be matched
in the whole cosmopolitan town of Maryville!
What status, what identity, I would achieve by
owning such a curio! Finally I marshaled my
nerve and asked if I might have the monkey when it
was finished (on the sixth day of creation).
My father replied, "This one is for your mother, but
I will carve you one someday."
Days passes, and then
weeks and, finally, years, and the someday on which
I was to receive the monkey did not arrive. In
truth, I forgot all about the peach-seed
monkey. Life in the ambience of my father was
exciting, secure, and colorful. He did all
those things for his children a father can do, not
the least of which was delighting in their
existence. One of the lasting tokens I
retained of the the measure of his dignity and
courage was the manner in which, with emphysema
sapping his energy and eroding his future, he
continued to wonder, to struggle, and to grow.
In the pure air and dry
heat of an Arizona afternoon on the summer before
the death of God, my father and I sat under a
juniper tree. I listened and wrestled with the
task of taking the measure of his success and
failure in life. There came a moment of
silence that cried out for testimony. Suddenly
I remembered the peach-seed monkey, and I heard the
right words coming from myself to fill the
silence: "In all that is important you have
never failed me. With one exception, you kept
the promises you made to me--you never carved me
that peach-seed monkey."
Not long after that
conversation I received a small package in the
mail. In it was a peach-seed monkey and a note
which said: "Here is the monkey I promised
you. You will notice that I broke one leg and
had to repair it with glue. I am sorry that I
didn't have time to carve a perfect one."
Two weeks later my father
died. He died only at the end of his
life.
For me, a peach-seed
monkey has become a symbol of all the promises which
were made to me and the energy and care which
nourished me and created me as a human being.
And, more fundamentally, it is a symbol of that
which is the foundation of all human personality and
dignity. Each of us is redeemed from shallow
and hostile life only by the sacrificial love and
civility which we have gratuitously
received....
In identifying myself as
one who lives by promises and promising, I find the
principle which gives unity to my life and binds
together the past, the future, and the
present. Without losing the spontaneity of
significant action in the present, I transcend every
dying moment toward my roots in the past and end in
the future. I have a story.
--Sam Keen, To a
Dancing God (1970).
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