THE TREASURE
I spent a lot of time at the master’s kitchen table, having tea and chit-chatting before we got down to the business of carving, I would be mesmerized by the collection of jewel-like glass bottles on his window shelves. Every color refracted light from faceted shapes and tossed careless rainbows around the room. He couldn’t help noticing and remarking about my covetous gaze, as my attention would drift to the riot of color beyond his head and he would have to put me back on task. “Beautiful colors, jah? Worthless junk, but I like them…” One day, shortly before he passed away, he once again caught me with my mind wandering among the pretty bottles, he said, “You love them, too, don’t you…today I am going to give you my most priceless piece. I trust you will cherish it as I have all these years.” He pulled down a sparkling bottle in the shape of a fish, the likes of which I had never seen. It was spectacular, with each scale carefully detailed. He carefully handed it to me. Of course, my eyes were dazzled by the sparkling treasure bottle that I had coveted from the first moment I had seen it. “Take good care of my treasure…oh, and you can have dis, too…” He pulled a chipped, crazed old piece of white pottery out from under the table by his feet. It was squat, worn and not at all within my description of lovely. I haphazardly stuffed it under one arm as I protectively cradled the precious fish bottle in the other, careful not to jar it as I made my way to the car to put it safely away. Once I got home, I dropped the old crock in the corner of the garden, planning to plant it with flowers…which I never managed to do. When the master came to our home for dinner…the one and only time before his passing, he noticed the old crock lying in the leaves and sadly remarked, “You mustn’t treat it like that.” The leaves eventually covered it over and it was well-forgotten. The fish bottle, however, resided in its place of honor on my kitchen windowsill, where it sparkled with every sunrise. Since that day, more than four years ago, there have been a lot of distractions, between illnesses, deaths…expected and unexpected… as well as other less profound family crises. Recently, I was catching up with a family friend, a former gallery owner who runs a wine store, when I noticed a collection of interesting wine bottles on display in the window. Many of the shapes and colors I recognized from the master’s window collection from years before…one of which was the precious fish which had graced my own windowsill since that time. As I remarked on their age, beauty and obvious value, my friend laughed and said, “These are worthless junk! They just make a nice display and catch people’s attention. They’re no more than five years old…it was a special promotion by a company that sold cheap wine…I used to give them to an old friend of mine. You knew him…the woodcarver. He told me he used to give them away.” As I pondered my friend’s words about my treasured fish bottle being worthless junk, I heard the echo of a familiar voice “…take good care of my treasure…” I couldn’t get home fast enough. I dashed to the corner of the garden where there had lain a long-neglected pile of leaves. With tears running down my cheeks, I scrabbled through it and found the remnants of an old crockery jug…no longer white, but filthy gray and in pieces. I carefully gathered all the broken shards and bits I could find and brought them inside to the kitchen sink, where I cleaned them, dried them and began the painstaking task of gluing them all back together. I was up all night puzzling through the pieces, in utter despair when they wouldn’t fit and exultant when they did. As I labored, I remembered each story from the master’s life, and saw how they all related, not to the sparkling fish, but to the humble jug…an ancient milk jug reminding him of his time as a cowherd in Denmark…as a milkman in a horse-drawn wagon trying to support a young family in a new country…of his children pitching pennies in a jar…of his wife and son’s passing and the emptiness he endured…of feeling “all filled up again” when he passed on his knowledge of life and carving to the next generations… …and I began to see a story of my own…about a person easily blinded by sparkles and rainbows who hadn’t recognized true treasure when she held it in her hands….
(Lord, please open my eyes to all your great and generous gifts…) back to Meditations on the Master
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