The Well and the Cathedral

The following is taken from a book by Tom Harpur entitled "For Christ's Sake."  Harpur gives credit to the Rev. Herbert O'Driscoll, who in turn credits Ira Progoff, "The Well and the Cathedral," and admits to modifying the story a little.  I will do the same...

There was once a vast, rocky wilderness, void of all vegetation but the hardiest of thorns and briers.  Through the middle of this desert stretched a rough highway along which the whole of humanity was making its pilgrimage.  They straggled along,  footsore and thirsty, tired and frightened by a myriad of nameless and faceless fears.


But at one point along the way, a clear spring of running water bubbled up out of the naked rock.  No one knows who first discovered it; that secret has long since been lost.  Yet for countless generations the people journeying along the road stopped to refresh themselves there.  And as they did so, they found to their surprise and delight that the waters not only quenched their thirst, but satisfied deeper needs as well!  Somehow, in drinking at that source, they found their minds and bodies healed, their hopes and courage growing strong again.  Life became rich with fresh meaning. They found they could pick up their various burdens and take to the way once more with new hearts.  They came to call the spot the place of living waters, and the spring itself, the water of life.


.....As time went on though, things began to change.  Slowly at first, but then more rapidly.  People began to roll up boulders around the spring as monuments of gratitude.  As the generations and centuries wore on, these monuments became more and more elaborate and ornate, until at last the spring was totally enclosed, arched completely over by a great fortress-like cathedral and protected by high stone walls.  A special caste of men, with special robes and a language all their own, came into being in order to set rules and barriers for preserving the purity of the well.  Access would no longer be free to all.  Disagreements as to exactly who could drink there, when, how much, and for how long grew very bitter.  In fact, wars came to be fought over these disagreements, and many were tortured, and killled....


The victors always seemed to be putting up more and more monuments and safeguards in gratitude for their victories.  Over time, the well itself, and the precious lifegiving water came to be bricked over and lost from view.  No one could remember when exactly it had happened, or who had done it.  When the pilgrims complained about the loss, and many were found fainting and even near death along the road, the powers that be either mocked their cries or simply ignored them.  Beautiful ceremonies were being carried on inside the so-called holy place to celebrate what the well had done for pilgrims many generations before, while at the very gates the people were dying of thirst,....judged to have not adequately or completely misunderstood the meaning of the well...

Eventually other water was piped in, at great expense, from distant places, but it was a mere shadow of the reality that had once been there for all to enjoy.  From time to time strange men came in from the wilderness warning those who had assumed control of the well to repent, to tear away all of the obstructions so that the masses might drink and be restored in body and spirit again.  These strangers would later be come to be revered as prophets and be greatly honoured within the shrine.  Ironically though, at the moment of their protest, they would come to be rejected,...tortured,....and even killed.

And so as time went by, the masses who journeyed along the way simply avoided the sacred place of living waters, and survived in whatever way they could.  Many, when they would pass by the shrine, would recall the stories they had learned in their youths about the hidden spring. They would be siezed with nostalgia and longings to deep to utter.  Others struggled on miserably.  Embittered and bound by cynical doubt that the so-called living waters even existed to begin with.... But sometimes, in the still of the night, when all of the chanting and ceremonies were stilled, a few pilgrims would sneak into the shrine and find a dark corner in which to hide from the shrine authorities, and rest their weary souls.  Many of them were sure they could hear something almost miraculous.  From somewhere deep within the rock and structures, they swore they could hear the faint echo of running waters.  And their eyes,....their eyes would swell with tears that soaked their cheeks...