One day the hermit left the hut. It was a time for shedding everything that weighed her down. The first thing she did was cry a million tears. Each tear cut a brighter scene of what was to come. As she stepped out the door, the heavens rejoiced. She heard hosannas and angels murmuring, “The hermit has left the hut. Rejoice!”

She did not look back lest she turn into a pillar of rice cakes and she had never liked those. She kept walking, sodden with tears and light. She did not look back lest she turn into a loaf of stale bread. She feared being nibbled to death by ducks.

The hermit rejoiced at her new-found freedom to speak the truth. She yelled at the sky in feigned madness, “Don’t mess with ME!”

She tried out her new voice as she walked along. “Don’t tell ME your troubles!” And no one did.

She realized that her sadness was falling off her spirit like wearing one of those microfiber raincoats. In its place was “Don’t mess with ME!” And her spirit began to grow.

But at the very end of the day, she shed another tear. This time it felt different. It turned her into an angel of compassion. It said, “You are whole now. You are whole.”

And the hermit never went back to the hut. She heard that they turned it into a Starbucks, but that was just hearsay.

From Vicki Woodyard’s book, Bigger The Sky: A Radical Awakening