My mother forbad us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them.
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This is an appealing story.
One day, a hermit brother about to leave for town went to a brother who lived nearby and who had continual compunction. He said to his fervent neighbor, “Please do me the kindness, brother, of taking care of my garden until my return.” The other replied, “Believe me, brother, I will do my best not to neglect it.” After the brother’s departure, he said to himself, Now take care of this garden. And from evening until dawn he stood in psalmody, ceaselessly shedding tears. He prayed the same way for the entire day. Coming home late, the brother found that hedgehogs had ravaged his garden.
He said, “God forgive you, brother, for not taking care of my garden.”
The other answered, “God knows I did my best to keep it, and I hope through God’s mercy that the little garden will bear fruit.”
The brother said, “But it has been completely destroyed.”
The other replied, “I know, but I have confidence in God that it will flower again.”
But he was speaking of his continual tears, the weeping for one’s sins in the hope of salvation, and of the garden of his heart, watered by him and in full flower.
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Joy Williams | “Hedgehog”