“And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

            ––William Shakespeare, Hamlet  

Part I

Once upon a time there was a gentle goddess named Lariliana who spent most of her abundant time in her garden far above the earth, making all kinds of flower seeds. Her greatest delight came from designing and creating these tiny grains of life that eventually grew into such dazzling wonders as sunflowers, forget-me-nots, African violets, lilies, snapdragons, gladiolas, and other fragrant beauties.

 
After creating a large batch of seeds, Lariliana would carry them in a crystal bucket over to her Fountain of Blossoming Visions. There, she would sit on the edge of the fountain and look through the depths of the water all the way down to earth. She would look for the different places where rain was falling, then recite poems while scooping up seeds in her hands and let the seeds fall into the rain clouds that traveled all over the world. Each seed would slip inside a raindrop and go wherever it fell.       

 
Sometimes Lariliana  studied the water in the Fountain of Blossoming Visions and marveled at the many ways human beings lived their lives.  She smiled broadly when she saw couples falling in love, and cooed like a dove when she saw babies being born. She thought it extraordinary that whether human beings lived in mountains or deserts, or in cities or jungles, certain things like emotions, sexual expressiveness, and death made them all the same.  For a long time, she had thought that war was a kind of athletic competition.  The first time she realized it was not, she cried so hard that her tears and sobs caused hurricanes and floods all over the earth.

 
One day Lariliana sprinkled several handfuls of seeds into the Fountain of Blossoming Visions and felt very content as she watched them slip into raindrops and zoom towards the earth. When the clouds went on their way, she sat for a while looking at people in a city in a country called the United States. Her attention focused on a university where thousands of people had gathered for an outdoor graduation ceremony.  She lightly applauded because this was one of the human activities she liked best. As she clapped her divine hands, she suddenly realized that one of the raindrops carrying one of her seeds was falling toward a young man receiving his degree in business administration. 

How odd, she thought. Why are you falling so far away from the other seeds and raindrops?

Focusing again on the graduation ceremony, Lariliana noticed that almost no one applauded, as they usually did, when the young many received his degree.  Did that mean he was all alone in the world? Then something very strange happened. The young man looked up to the sky as if he could sense Lariliana looking down at him. As he looked up, his mouth fell open, and the raindrop carrying the flower seed went straight down his surprised throat. The young man coughed and swallowed, then moved on across the stage as another graduate’s name was called. 

The sign was a very clear one to Lariliana. From her garden up in the sky, she continued to watch the young man for weeks until she saw that he was a very miserable human being.  The business degree he had earned and the fact that he was very handsome, by human standards, seemed to do nothing to help bring joy into his life.  His bitter behavior towards other humans kept him stuck in a job gathering animal poop so it could be analyzed and tested for possible medicinal and other scientific purposes. Lariliana thought this work was rather noble but the young man obviously did not, and it broke Lariliana’s heart to watch him every night have nightmares about a giant turd trying to flush him down a toilet.  

Could there be any doubt that her flower seed falling into his mouth just as he looked up was a sign that she was meant to help him?  Surely her own divine intuition had guided that seed. She made a decision: the best way to help this young man would be for her to go down to earth and take on the form of a woman. So she dived into her Fountain of Blossoming Visions and glided down to a rain cloud, then floated to the earth where she became a woman named Lily Ann Cloud. 
 

--Thank you for reading Part 1 of “Astonishing Tale of the Goddess and the Skylark.” To read further please click here or paste the following link: http://www.redbridgereview.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=149&Itemid=44  .

by Aberjhani
© 10/6/2006

(Goddess artwork by Sondra Stanton)