4
Jonathan kept at it, fiercely, day after day, from before sunrise till past midnight.
And for all his effort he moved not a feather width from his spot.
"Forget about faith!" Chiang said it time and again. "You didn't need faith to fly,
you needed to understand flying. This is just the same. Now try again ..."
Then one day Jonathan, standing on the shore, closing his eyes, concentrating, all
in a flash knew what Chiang had been telling him. "Why, that's true! I am a perfect,
unlimited gull!" He felt a great shock of joy.
"Good!" said Chiang and there was victory in his voice.
Jonathan opened his eyes. He stood alone with the Elder on a totally different
seashore - trees down to the water's edge, twin yellow suns turning overhead.
"At last you've got the idea," Chiang said, "but your control needs a little work... "
Jonathan was stunned. "Where are we?"
Utterly unimpressed with the strange surroundings, the Elder brushed the question
aside. "We're on some planet, obviously, with a green sky and a double star for a
sun."
Jonathan made a scream of delight, the first sound he had made since he had left
Earth. "IT WORKS!"
"Well, of course, it works, Jon." said Chiang. "It always works, when you know
what you're doing. Now about your control..."
By the time they returned, it was dark. The other gulls looked at Jonathan with awe
in their golden eyes, for they had seen him disappear from where he had been
rooted for so long.
He stood their congratulations for less than a minute. "I'm the newcomer here! I'm
just beginning! It is I who must learn from you!"
"I wonder about that, Jon," said Sullivan standing near. "You have less fear of
learning than any gull I've seen in ten thousand years. "The Flock fell silent, and
Jonathan fidgeted in embarrassment.
"We can start working with time if you wish," Chiang said, "till you can fly the past
and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most
powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the
meaning of kindness and of love."
A month went by, or something that felt about like a month, and Jonathan learned
at a tremendous rate. He always had learned quickly from ordinary experience,
and now, the special student of the Elder Himself, he took in new ideas like a
streamlined feathered computer.
But then the day came that Chiang vanished. He had been talking quietly with them
all, exhorting them never to stop their learning and their practicing and their
striving to understand more of the perfect invisible principle of all life. Then, as he
spoke, his feathers went brighter and brighter and at last turned so brilliant that no
gull could look upon him.
"Jonathan," he said, and these were the last words that he spoke, "keep working on
love."
Replies
He reached perfection finally !
Wonderful !
but he still needs to work, so let's wait what will happen next !