Once upon a time, two hermits, moved by the desire of sanctifying themselves, lived in a hostile, rocky desert. Their caves faced each other. After years of intense prayer and terrible mortifications, one hermit was convinced   that he had arrived at the summit of perfection.

The other was equally pious, but also good and kind. He would stop to talk with the pilgrims who visited them once in a long while. He would take care and give hospitality to anyone who had lost his way, or even to fugitives. “But,” thought the first hermit, “This is time stolen from meditation and prayer!” and he disapproved of even the least shortcomings of the other.

To make the other understand in a very visible way, how far he was from sanctity, he decided to place a stone in front of his own cave, every time the other made a mistake – a stone, of course, proportionate to the gravity of the mistake.

In time, there rose in front of his cave a solid wall closing him in. With all his preoccupation with the other man’s failures, you better imagine what happened to his own spiritual pursuit.

Stone by stone daily we build walls in our hearts to close ourselves in; small and big stones of resentments, hatred, jealousy, unresolved problems etc. Worse still, we by our own actions become stones in other people’s walls. When we are preoccupied with others’ faults and defects, we have no time to devote for our own spiritual advancement.

Very often I see such stones, no they may not be big ones, they come in the form of mail: Oh yes I’m sure you know what I’m talking about; mail about one community talking about another, Christians against Muslims, Muslims against Hindus etc, etc, bringing them down, saying how hypocritical they are, and quoting speeches from so called world leaders.

Then the other religious community replies and talks about how wrong the other is and how right they are, and this goes on and on.

We do this stonewall building in even other tinier ways:

Jokes about another’s faith, another’s leaders, priests, etc.

What we don’t realize is that later when we talk with sincerity about something, nobody hears us, because the walls we’ve built around ourselves are so high we can’t be seen nor our voices heard.

“Where’s Bob?”

“Behind the wall!”

“Who built the wall around him?”

“He himself!”

Yes, it’s we ourselves who build these walls around ourselves, stone, by stone even if they are small ones. Let’s stop such jokes, and stop such mail, and be free like the first hermit to be able to dialogue and understand each other…!

—————————————