A little Mother called Ruth prayed to the Lord one night.

“Is it really my wrongdoing that estranges me from my fellow humans?” she cried.

She woke in the gray hours of the morning and found an angel standing by her bed.

“Who are you, lord?” she said, crossing herself as she spoke.

The angel said, “Come.”

So she followed him into the garden. She saw there among the melon vines a plant that she’d never looked on before.

The angel showed her at the end of the vine a broad, spotty leaf that trembled violently though the breeze was so slight it could hardly have been measured.

“What is this?” she said.

“Agony” he answered.

Then he moved his finger further into the vine and showed her a thick, sickly-white stem.

“And this?” she asked.

“Terror.”

Then he showed her a sound green shoot.

“This is the true desire for what is good” he said. The shoot was small but it was firm and clung tenaciously to the ground. A little stream of water flowed to it and the shoot seemed to be drinking up the water as if it wanted to form its own roots and become the whole plant.

“Is this the true plant, after all?” she asked hopefully.

But the angel directed her gaze further along the vine and showed her a large purple stem; or perhaps it was a tumor swollen on the stem. The little Mother began to trace its form among the leaves with her fingers. She never reached the end, for as she felt it she asked once more, with disgust, “And what is this?” But he never answered.

So she woke in her bed wondering.