Pony Eggs and Other Stories

UNTIL A FEW DAYS AGO I did not know there was a saint named John the Dwarf, who was born around 339C.E. in Egypt and, at the age of eighteen, withdrew into the desert to live as a solitary monk. He discipled himself to a monk named Pambo who gave him a hunk of dry wood and told him to plant it and cultivate it until it became a living tree. This story reminds me of my Uncle Horace, whose father gave him an egg and told him it was a “pony egg.” “Take care of it and maybe it will hatch into a pony,” his father told him. It didn’t, but John the Dwarf fared better, because, after years of watering and cultivating his chunk of wood, it sprouted and became a flourishing tree. Pambo named it the “Tree of Obedience” and people used to make pilgrimages John the Dwarf’s hermitage to see it and seek his advice on spiritual matters.

Quite a few of John the Dwarf’s sayings have been preserved. Some are commonplace aphorisms, while others are enigmatic to the point where one wonders if John the Dwarf was amusing himself by messing with people’s heads. It is as if I became a solitary monk, and my “sayings” were recorded for posterity, and you were to read how “Abba Jonathan was sitting on the floor of his cell talking with some other monks, and one of them scratched his forehead. ‘Stop doing that,’ said Abba Jonathan.”

As I read these ancient anecdotes, it seems there is something vaguely familiar about them…

I know! Yoda! “If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are ... a different game you should play.” Now that is some potent spiritual advice! Come to think of it, Pambo’s instruction to the novice John the Dwarf also reminds me of the “wax on…wax off” scene in Karate Kid. These guru masters all seem to have gone to the same guru school.

Except for Uncle Horace’s father: he was just plain mean. Uncle Horace, after months of caring for the pony egg, dropped it and it broke. “Now you’ll never get a pony,” his father said.

Despite such harsh treatment, Uncle Horace grew up to be a kind, jolly, bald man who never did a mean thing, at least to my knowledge. I guess you could say the “chunk of dry wood” became a flourishing tree in his case, just as it did for John the Dwarf.

Examples of John the Dwarf Messing with our Heads

Abba John the Dwarf said, 'a house is not built by beginning at the top and working down. You must begin with the foundations in order to reach the top. They said to him, 'What does this saying mean?'

One day when Abba John was going up to Scetis with some other brothers, their guide lost his way for it was night time.  So the brothers said to Abba John, "What shall we do, Abba, in order not to die wandering about, for the brother has lost the way?"  The old man said to them, "If we speak to him, he will be filled with grief and shame.  But look here, I will pretend to be ill and say I cannot walk any more; then we can stay here till the dawn."  This he did.  The others said, "We will not go on either, but we will stay with you."  They sat there until the dawn, and in this way they did not upset the brother.  

And from Yoda the Jedi

Good relations with the Wookies, I have.

Concentrate all your fire on the nearest starship.

Mudhole? Slimy? My home this is!