The Ever-Weeping Woman & The River Daughter
There was once a woman who was
ever-weeping. By day she wept, and by
night. She wept with joy, and with
sorrow. She wept because the clouds were
high, and because they lay low. She wept
when the sun shone bright, and when the rain poured down. But most of all she wept because it seemed to
her that there were no more surprises left in the world.
There were few places where she
could do her weeping in peace, for those she came across found her ceaseless
tears unbearable after a time. And so, when
her feet could no longer carry her from place to place and the time had come for
her to find a home, she sat beside a river under the cover of willow branches
and found herself in perfect company for her tears.
Thus she sat and cried her tears until
the river daughter, astonished by the sudden swell in her river, tread from
within the swift current and surfaced to see the face of the weeping one.
Then the river daughter asked, ‘Sister,
why do you cry?’
‘I cry because of the beauty and the
sorrow of the world. I cry because of the
changes all around me. But most of all I
cry because none of it is unexpected; it seems that there are no more surprises
left in all the world.’
The river daughter thought on this,
sinking below the depths of water, in contemplation on the nature of the weeping
woman’s tears.
It came to her all of a sudden—as all the best
ideas are wont to do—and without a second thought she left her river and came and
placed her arms around the shoulders of the ever-weeping woman. The woman’s eyes flew wide at the unexpected
kindly impulse, for no one, in all her days had ever performed so caring a
deed. In her surprise, she felt herself
freeze in the wonder of it.
To this day she sits, wide-eyed and frozen—so
let that be the lesson here: that we never think the world has yielded up all her
surprises.