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!
