A long time ago, in the country of the Munchkins, there lived a young woodman who chopped wood for his living. He was strong, and his hands were good with an axe, and he had a small house in the forest where he lived alone.
The woodman fell in love with a Munchkin girl. She lived nearby, with her old mother, and she was as kind as she was small, and the woodman thought there had never been anyone in the world he wanted to be near as much as he wanted to be near her.
He saved up money. He worked hard. He built a small cottage, with two windows and a stone chimney, where they would live together when they were married.
But the old mother did not want her daughter to marry. The mother was lonely. The mother wanted the daughter to stay home and take care of her. So the mother went to a wicked witch, in another part of the wood, and she paid the witch to do something about the woodman.
The witch enchanted the woodman's axe.
The very next time he went out to chop, the axe slipped in his hands. It cut off his left leg.
The woodman did not stop loving the Munchkin girl. He went to the tinsmith in the village, and the tinsmith made him a new leg out of tin. It worked just as well as the old one, after a few days of getting used to it. He went back to chopping wood.
The next time the axe slipped, it cut off his right leg. And then his left arm. And then his right. And then his head. The tinsmith made each of them in tin. The woodman kept going. He kept going for the girl.
At last the axe cut him in two, right through the heart.
The tinsmith made him a new body, all of tin, very fine and shiny and strong. But there was no place in the new body for a heart. The tinsmith did not know how to make one out of tin.
So the woodman became all tin, and lived on, and went on chopping wood, but he could no longer remember how to love the Munchkin girl, because the heart he had loved her with was gone.
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PART II
The Tin Man
in which a tin man stands in the rain
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The Tin Man went on living his life, in the small cottage with two windows that he had built for the girl. But everything was different. He could not remember to visit her, because the part of him that had remembered was gone. He could not feel sad about not visiting her, either, because that part was gone too.
For a long time, things went on. The Tin Man chopped wood. The Munchkin girl waited. Then the girl, who had not understood why he stopped coming, married someone else.
The Tin Man did not feel anything about this. Or he did not think he did.
One afternoon, he was chopping a tree in a clearing in the wood. It started to rain. The rain ran down his joints. The Tin Man knew, in some careful corner of himself that was not feeling but was something close to remembering, that rain made tin rust.
He raised his arm to walk home.
His arm did not move.
He raised his other arm. That did not move either. He tried his legs. He tried his neck. He tried his fingers, one by one. Nothing moved at all.
He was rusted into one position, in the middle of the clearing, with his axe raised over a tree he had not finished cutting.
The rain stopped. The sun came out. He stood there for a year. The leaves grew on the trees and fell from them. The leaves grew again. He stood there.
He could not move. He could not call out. He could not even tell himself how lonely he was, because the part of him that would have known was gone with his heart.
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PART III
The Tin Man
in which the rain is washed away
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When Dorothy and the Scarecrow came through the wood, they heard a strange sound. It was a small high sound, like a sigh made of metal, coming from the clearing.
They followed the sound.
They found the Tin Man, standing in his clearing, frozen in place, his axe raised, his joints orange with rust. He could not turn his head. But he could move his eyes. He looked at Dorothy.
"There is an oilcan," he said, in a voice that was very small from not being used. "Behind the door of the cottage. Please. Bring it."
Dorothy ran for the cottage. She came back with the oilcan. The Scarecrow held it for her, and Dorothy oiled his neck, his shoulders, his elbows, his knees. The Tin Man moved a little. Then a little more. Then he lowered his axe at last, slowly, and put it down.
He bent his stiff neck and looked at her.
"How long have I been there?" he asked.
"I do not know," said Dorothy. "I have only just found you."
The Tin Man thought about this. He thought about the years in the clearing. He thought about the cottage. He thought about the Munchkin girl, in a way he had not thought about her since the heart was gone.
He could not feel her. He knew this was the case. But he could remember the shape of having felt her, the way you can remember the shape of a room you used to live in, even when you can no longer go inside it.
"I would like," said the Tin Man slowly, "to come with you on this road. The wizard might have a heart for me. I have been without one a long time."
Dorothy oiled the last joint, the joint at the corner of his mouth, so he could speak more easily.
The Tin Man came with them.
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PART IV
The Tin Man
in which a heart is given
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On the road, the Tin Man was the most careful of all of them. He did not step on beetles. He did not raise his voice. When the Cowardly Lion was frightened in the dark, the Tin Man stood next to him without saying anything. When Dorothy cried about Aunt Em, the Tin Man brought her water from a stream and waited, very quietly, until she was finished.
He thought he was doing these things because they were the right things to do. He did not think he was feeling them. The part of him that would have felt them was gone. He was sure of this.
The others noticed.
"You are very kind," said Dorothy one evening, by the fire.
"I am being careful," said the Tin Man. "It is not the same thing."
The Scarecrow looked up from the stick he was sharpening. "Why are you being careful?" he asked.
The Tin Man thought about this for a long while.
"Because," he said at last, "it would be terrible if something hurt one of you."
He stopped. He looked at his hands, which were tin, and shiny, and could no longer hold an axe carelessly.
"Oh," he said.
That was the whole conversation. It was enough.
When at last they came to the Wizard, and the Wizard gave each of them what they had asked for, the Wizard took out a small heart made of red silk, stuffed with sawdust, and put it inside the Tin Man's chest.
"There," said the Wizard. "Now you have a heart."
The Tin Man held very still. He waited to feel different. He did not feel different. He did not feel anything new, because he had been feeling all along, on the long road, in the cottage in the wood, with his friends by the fire. The silk heart was not the heart that mattered. The heart that mattered had grown back, slowly and quietly, in the years he had stood in the rain, and on the road, and beside his friends.
He cried.
He did not know that tin men could cry. It seemed they could.
He kept the silk heart in his chest forever, because the Wizard had given it to him with kindness, and kindness deserves to be kept. But the real heart was the one underneath. The one he had been told was gone. The one that had been growing back the whole time.
A long time before the Tin Man, a man named John, who had loved Jesus most, wrote a letter to his small church about where love comes from. Would you like to hear it?
A LETTER FROM JOHN
John once wrote that love does not come from inside us. Love is of God. It flows through anyone who is willing to let it.
The Tin Man had been letting it flow the whole time.
What love has been moving through you, that you have not yet called by its name?
The Tin Man thought he had lost the part of him that could love. He thought love had a place inside him, a particular place, and that the witch had taken it away with his heart, and that the only way to get it back was for somebody to give it back to him.
John, who loved Jesus more than any of the disciples, wrote in his letter that love does not come from inside us. Love is of God. It is something that flows through anyone who is willing to let it.
The Tin Man did not need the wizard's silk heart. He had been loving his friends all along. Love had been flowing through him on the long road. He had only been refusing to call it that.
The silk heart was a kindness. The real heart was what he had been carrying without knowing.
Who have you been loving without permission? What did you tell yourself it was, instead?
1 JOHN 4:7
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"He had been carrying it without knowing."
My wife died eight years ago. For three years after, I told everybody I had no more love in me. I said it was used up. I said it had gone with her. I meant it. I really did mean it. My granddaughter, who was four when her grandmother died, started coming to my house on Saturdays. She would sit on my lap. She would tell me about her dreams. She would ask me to read her books, the same three books, every week, the same way. I did not realize, for a long time, that I loved her more every Saturday. I thought I was just being patient. I thought I was just doing what grandfathers do. I did not have a category for what was happening. One Saturday, when she was about seven, she said, "Grandpa, you love me." Not a question. A statement. And I said, "Yes. Yes, I do." I had not used the word in three years. I did not know it was still there, until she said it for me. The Tin Man's silk heart is the day somebody else finally says it out loud, and you remember what you have been doing all along.
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, David, 64, Phoenix
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there is another story about someone who came home and found that his father had loved him the whole time he was gone, and had been waiting for him on the road.
it is the story of the Prodigal Son.