Twelfth Tale Of a Master of Prayer
Twelfth Tale
Of a Master of Prayer
A story:
O nce there was a Master of Prayer, a man whose calling was to lead all in worship.
He was wholly devoted to his task of conducting prayers and hymns and songs of praise to Blessed God.
The Master lived out in the countryside and it was his custom to come into town, where he might meet with a particular person or visit with the humble townsfolk, the poor and the like.
Once there, he would get to chatting with folks about the point of life and how there was truly no other purpose in the entire world but to live one’s life in devotion to the Almighty.
One ought to spend the length of one’s years engaged in worship of Blessed God through prayer and singing hymns and songs of praise.
He would often strike up a conversation about this, and the minds of those he spoke with would be awakened as his words pierced their hearts until they happily consented to join him.
As soon as they did, he would lead them off to his spot in the countryside.
He had chosen to live far from bustling towns and cities, in a place where there was a stream and orchards of fruit trees and where it did not matter how 142 one dressed—however one wished to go about was perfectly acceptable.
Such was his practice: he would go into town and talk with the folks there and convince them to follow his path of devotion to God and commit themselves wholly to His worship.
He would take those who heeded him and lead them out to his place in the countryside.
There, they would pray and sing hymns and songs of divine praise and they would engage in fasting and beating their breasts in confession and in self-denial and repentance.
The Master doled out his own compositions of hymns and paeans and penitential prayers, and the people would devote themselves to such prayers continuously.
Before long, some among the people that he had brought with him were able to bring yet others into the fold and to Blessed God.
The Master would occasionally grant them permission to go into town to awaken the minds of others to the Almighty so that they might serve Him.
So the Master went about in this way, winning people over to his mission and bringing them from towns into the countryside.
In due course, he gained a reputation far and wide and began to become quite famous.
Suddenly, people were reported missing in the more populated places and no one knew what had become of them.
Someone’s son or son-in-law would vanish and their whereabouts would be unknown until it was discovered that they were with the Master who went around inducing others to serve Blessed God.
But there was no catching him to stop him.
For the Master conducted himself cleverly, changing his guise every time.
On one occasion he might appear as a pauper and on another as a merchant—always a different disguise. 143
In addition, if ever he entered into a discussion and realized that he was not winning his listeners over, he would shift topics so that they would never guess his true aim, namely, bringing them to serve Blessed God.
They would be hard-pressed even to guess at where the conversation was leading, even though his true intention all along was to bring the people he conversed with to serve the Almighty.
This was his singular mission. But if he realized that he might not be convincing them, he would bewilder them with baffling words to obscure his meaning.
So it was that the Master could never be caught as he went on this way until he was famous far and wide, and capturing him seemed impossible.
The Master and his people lived out in the countryside, where they were constantly engaged in prayer and songs of worship and praise to the Blessed Lord, and in fasts, self-denial and repentance.
The Master also saw to it that he provided all that his followers needed.
If he felt that one of his devotees, based on this individual’s state of mind, might be better suited to serve God apparelled in gold embroidery, he made sure such was provided.
On the other hand, if he had brought a rich man from town into the fold and he felt that this rich man would be better clad in tatters, he knew just what to do.
Thus he accommodated the needs of all. To those that he brought to serve Blessed God, fasting and the most stringent forms of self-denial were dearer than any worldly pleasure; indeed, they relished their fasting and self-denial more than any other earthly delight.
And it came to pass…
144 There was a nation overflowing with wealth.
Everyone there was quite rich, but the nation was run in a most outrageous manner.
Everything was handled on the basis of wealth.
The rank and honours due to anyone were all reckoned according to wealth alone.
It was established that so many thousands or tens of thousands of pieces of gold conveyed some particular rank and honour.
And if one had even more thousands or tens of thousands, this meant an even higher rank and honour still—all according to the sum of money one had.
As for the one who had so many more thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands, he was determined to be a king.
What is more, the amount of money one had was signalled by a particular banner. Whosoever, according to his affluence, had a particular rank or honour was given a banner that indicated the rank he held.
It was established that a person’s rank, as determined by their overall worth, might cause them to be deemed a common man, but one who had less was not considered a man at all, but rather was ranked a beast or a bird in human form.
Thus, beasts and birds walked among the people there.
If there was a man who had only a little bit of money, he might be reckoned a lion or a sphinx.
If there was a man with less money still, his rank would be a bird.
And there were many other beasts and birds, as well, for those who had less money were not considered human.
The principal thing, after all, was money, and every rank and every honour was determined by it.
Furthermore, the people of this Nation of Wealth allocated among themselves the ranks of heavenly bodies and constellations.
145 Whosoever was accounted to have a particular sum of money could be a star, insofar as having so much one had the power of a star, whose dust is the source of the gold that can be extracted from the earth.
If a person had such a sum, then he was considered to possess the power of a gold dust-producing star and was, therefore, considered a star himself.
So believed the people of the country in their delusion about money.
The people there had similar ideas about constellations.
If one had a great sum, he was considered to be a constellatory array of stars.
They also designated themselves as angels according to their level of wealth.
And eventually they got to calling themselves gods as well.
If one had so many thousands and hundreds of thousands, he was determined a god.
Since God had granted him so much money, he was considered a god himself.
As the existence of this nation became known in the world and the Master heard about it, he heaved a deep sigh, saying, Who knows how much further these people might stray, believing as they do?
Among his devotees were some who, without even asking the Master’s opinion, betook themselves to the Nation of Wealth to set those people on the right path.
They had great pity for the nation whose inhabitants were so deluded in their lust for money, especially as the Master had said that they might go even further astray.
So it was that the devotees of the Master headed to the nation in order to set them right and lead them away from their folly.
They entered the Nation of Wealth and, sure enough, straight away came across a humble man—considered a beast by the 146 locals—and got to talking with him, saying, Truly, money is not the point of living, but rather the purpose of our lives is to serve God.
But the man would not even listen to them, so deeply rooted was the belief that money was the most important thing in the world.
The same thing happened when they went to speak with another countryman.
He, too, would not heed them. They wished to continue the conversation, but he told them, Frankly, I have no time to speak with you.
Why not? they asked.
He answered, Because we all have to leave this land to go to another.
As money is the sole purpose of life, it has been decided that we ought to move to a place where money is manufactured, where gold and silver can be extracted from the earth to make more money.
All of us are set to head out right away.
Moreover, the people of the nation had come to think that the foul air of the earth was not fit for them.
Nor were they to associate with people from other countries, lest they be polluted by them, believing as they did that everyone else in the world was impure and could defile them.
So they decided that they would look to lofty mountains where they would be higher than the rest of the world and above its foul air.