A FABLE
The Crow and the Pitcher
in which patience does what force cannot
· · ·
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On a hot summer afternoon, in a dry country, a thirsty crow came down to a pitcher.

The pitcher had been left in a garden. It was tall and made of clay, with a narrow neck. There was water inside. The crow could see the water. The crow could smell the water. The crow was very, very thirsty.

She put her beak into the neck of the pitcher.

Her beak did not reach the water. The pitcher was too tall. The water was too low.

She tipped the pitcher with her foot. The pitcher was too heavy.

She knocked her beak against the side of the pitcher. The pitcher did not break.

The crow sat on the rim of the pitcher and thought. She was a clever crow. She had thought herself out of many problems before. But she was very thirsty, and the sun was very hot, and her thinking was getting slower.

Then she saw a small stone on the path.

She picked up the stone in her beak. She dropped it into the pitcher. The water came up a little.

She found another stone. She dropped that one in too. The water came up a little more.

The crow flew, slowly, around the garden. Each time she found a small stone, she carried it back, and she dropped it into the pitcher, and the water came up a little.

It took a long time. The sun was beginning to set. The crow was very tired. But at last, the water rose up the neck of the pitcher far enough that she could reach it with her beak.

She drank.

The water was cool and good, and she drank for a long time, and when she was finished she sat on the rim of the pitcher and looked down at the small heap of stones at the bottom, and she felt, in the way crows sometimes feel, very pleased with herself.

She had not been the strongest. She had not been the fastest. She had only been patient. One stone at a time.

A long time after Aesop,
a man named James, the brother of Jesus,
wrote a letter to a scattered church.
He said something the crow would have understood.
Would you like to hear it?
A LETTER FROM JAMES

The crow could not drink the water all at once. She could not break the pitcher. She could not tip it over. She could only pick up one small stone, and drop it in, and pick up another, and drop that one in too.

James wrote a letter to a church that was struggling, and tired, and not sure how to keep going. He told them: let patience finish its work. Patience does its work slowly. Patience does not skip steps. But when patience has done what it does, what is left is whole, and complete, and lacking nothing.

The crow did not get her drink any faster by wishing. She got it by carrying one stone at a time, until the water came up to meet her.

What stone could you carry today, that you would not even notice you were carrying, but that, over time, would raise the water?

JAMES 1:4
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· · ·
"She had only been patient. One stone at a time."
My daughter has a learning difference. The doctors told us, when she was four, that reading would always be hard for her. We did not push her. We did not drill her. We just read to her every night. Twenty minutes. The same books, over and over, for years. She is twelve now. She reads, slowly, but she reads. Last month she finished a whole book on her own for the first time. It took her three weeks. She came down the stairs at bedtime holding it, and she said, "Mom. I did it." I cried. I cried because I remembered every single one of those nights, and I had not known, on any of them, that we were carrying stones to a pitcher. The water came up in the end. But it took a thousand stones.
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, Anna, 35, Minneapolis
❦
there is another story about a small bear
with a honey pot,
who learned to wait,
and to share, and to find his honey
in a different way than he had expected. his name was Pooh.
A FABLE BY AESOP