The Treasure

The Treasure

The treasure was said to be contained within a chest. Almost everyone had heard about it, but almost no one had seen it.

The treasure was so vast in its unimaginable magnificence that legends wove around it.

There was an old woman who lived in a hut, simple and poor. Some things that she had hoped for in life had come, only to be taken away later. Other things she had hoped for had never come at all.

But she was not bitter. Her worn fingers would open the shutters of her hut every morning, and her old eyes would gaze reverentially upon the dawn. With gratitude for the breath of life that passed her lips, she would pass the day in prayer and obedience to plain necessities.

The old woman knew the legend of the treasure of course, but she did not seek to find it. Such wealth as this was not something she desired, or could even conceive.

So it was with wonder that one morning she found an oddly decorated chest upon the dirt floor of her hut. Kneeling before it, she lifted its lid, never suspecting the gift that had come unbidden to her life.

Within the chest was a beautiful cloth, finely woven and intricate. It was strange, yet also strangely familiar.

The woman touched this cloth gently and felt a vast pain sweep through her heart, a long lost memory known only in its deepest feelings of profound hurt.

The woman picked up the cloth as if it were a tender child. She held it, caressed it, and allowed the pain of it to flow freely, accepted at last.

At her embrace, the cloth disintegrated into fine dust as its long held agony dissolved. And the woman breathed more deeply the fire of life.

Then she looked again into the chest.

There lay another cloth, and yet another, and another and another.

Each a memory, a forgotten hurt, an ancient rejected pain never felt or healed.

Each waiting through the ages to be touched, loved and released.

And the woman understood that the greatest of all treasures

was now hers.