The path

There lived among the hills a woman and her son, and he was her first-born and her only child.

And the boy died of a fever whilst the physician stood by.

The mother was distraught with sorrow, and she cried to the physician and besought him saying, “Tell me, tell me, what was it that made quiet his striving and silent his song?”

And the physician said, “It was the fever.”

And the mother said, “What is the fever?”

And the physician answered, “I cannot explain it. It is a thing infinitely small that visits the body, and we cannot see it with the human eye.”

The physician left her. And she kept repeating to herself, “Something infinitely small. We cannot see it with our human eye.”

And at evening the priest came to console her. And she wept and she cried out saying, “Oh, why have I lost my son, my only son, my first-born?”

And the priest answered, “My child, it is the will of God.”

And the woman said, “What is God and where is God? I would see God that I may tear my bosom before Him, and pour the blood of my heart at His feet. Tell me where I shall find Him.”

And the priest said, “”God is infinitely vast. He is not to be seen with our human eye.”

Then the woman cried out, “The infinitely small has slain my son through the will of the infinitely great! Then what are we? What are we?”

At that moment the woman’s mother came into the room with the shroud for the dead boy, and she heard the words of the priest and also her daughter’s cry. And she laid down the shroud, and took her daughter’s hand in her own hand, and she said, “My daughter, we ourselves are the infinitely small and the infinitely great; and we are the path between the two.”