Once upon a time there was a garden with a high wall all around it. The people that lived in the garden had never seen what lay beyond the wall. And there was much speculation about it.
One man said that there was nothing beyond the wall, a vast nothing. When asked where the garden had come from the man simply said that the nothingness had collided with itself creating the garden and its inhabitants. Some believed the man but others wondered how nothingness could bump into itself in the first place.
One day a little boy was working alone near the wall. Suddenly an old man appeared at the top of the wall. He climbed down into the garden with an surprising agility for a man of his age. He looked just like any of the other old men that hobbled around the garden. He told the boy that he would carry him to the top of the wall if the boy was willing.
Now the boy was not a smart boy. In fact, he was the most foolish boy that had ever lived in the garden. And this may have been the reason he accepted the man’s offer so willingly and without much thought. The man scooped the boy up and began to climb the wall, holding the boy with one arm and climbing with the other.
Finally they reached the top of the wall. It was just wide enough for the old man and the boy to walk along side by side. The boy could not see much of the world outside the wall, a thick fog covered everything. The man described some of what lay beneath the fog, but the child’s feeble mind struggled to grasp what was being said. He did understand that it was something far more marvelous than the garden inside the wall.
Then the man turned his attention to the garden. From the top of the wall it looked so different. The man began to explain the garden to the boy in a way no one had ever before. Suddenly the boy understood the garden better than he ever had. He understood why it existed, where it had come from and what would become of it. He also understood his place in it.
Finally the man said it was time for the boy to return to the garden. The boy begged the man to tell him more, but the man said he couldn’t. He had told the boy all he knew. Someday the boy would learn more when it was his time to go into the world beyond the garden, until then he must live by what the man had told him. The boy promised he would.
For many years the boy tried to tell the people in the garden what had happened but no one believed him. Even when the man returned to remind the boy of all that he had told him people only scoffed. The man did not appear to be anything special. And when he offered to carry each of the people to the top of the wall they only laughed. They did not belive that the old man was strong enough to carry them to the top. But many of the children accepted the man’s offer and were changed forever.
