A story of how the listening people became the people of the chalice.

Once there was and once there was not a dark time that appeared to be full of brightness and light.

Everywhere there were bright and shiny objects and people spent much of their time keeping all the objects bright and shiny.

In the mornings, the people would get into their bright and shiny cars and drive to big huge shiny towers where they sat in front of bright machines and moved their hands all day.

At night all the people would go into bright shiny houses and play with their clean machines, eat dinner, and watch big screens.

This went on for many years and everyone thought they were happy because it was bright and shiny all the time.

But really, it was a dark time.  People were just blinded by the glare off their bright and shiny stuff.

Some of the people began to wonder why everything was so bright and shiny all the time.  These people listened to the world and wondered.

They wondered about all the neat things in the world like snowflakes and cheesies.  They wondered about the sad things like war and hunger. They wondered how the world was made.

They wondered how to show their gladness for being part of all these strange and fabulous things.

So they looked around to see how other people wondered and worshipped.

Some listening people found lots of worshipers of Lord Auto.

Everywhere there were ribbons of asphalt laid out so people could go on pilgrimages to Lord Auto. They sacrificed farmland and forests, wetlands and hills just to worship him.

They drove bright and shiny cars at great speeds and went Zoom Zoom! Beep! Beep! Zoom Zoom! Beep! Beep!

The listening people found this a little noisy.

Other listening people saw that lots of people worshipped Lady Media.

Their houses were filled with altars – big screens and little screens everywhere.  People sacrificed so much of their time to Lady Media. They even had little devices that they carried around with them so that they could worship Lady Media any time at all.

These people would Click and Scroll, Click and Scroll all day.

The listening people found this a little tiring.

So they kept looking and found there was someone even more important that everybody worshipped – the Kid.

Kid Stuff.

Everybody filled their houses with stuff and then went right back out and bought more stuff just so they could worship the Kid. They built giant temples called shopping malls and big boxes so it could be all stuff all the time.

They said Buy! Buy! Buy!  More! More! More!

The listening people found this all a little weird.

After all the Zoom Zoom! Beep! Beep! and the Click and Scroll, Click and Scroll, and the Buy! Buy! Buy!  More! More! More!, the listening people were overwhelmed.

They thought “there has to be a better way to be thankful for all that is.”

One day a listening person ran into a little public garden between the bright and shiny buildings and flopped onto a bench.

“Boy o boy”, said the listening person, “I just want to be glad for the world”.

For a few moments it was quiet.

And then from the other side of the garden, a voice said “Me too!”

And these two listening people began to talk.  Soon they found other listening people who felt the same way.

They started to hang out together and talk about how neat snowflakes were – how no two were alike and how that was true of cheesies too – and how did cheesies get made anyways?

And they talked and wondered about the whole world.

How fantastic the sky was at night and how lonely they got sometimes and how good they felt singing.

They gave thanks just by being together.

And when they met, they would light a candle and place it in a beautiful bowl, to remind them of the light within each and every being, the light at the heart of the world.

And that is a story of how we became the people of the chalice.