A FABLE FOR OUR TIMES

A FABLE FOR OUR TIMES

            A little boy was playing on the beach.  He decided to build himself a sand castle.  He would be its king, and its walls would defend him from invaders coming in from the sea.

            

            He started  scooping sand up around himself to build his castle’s  walls.  He built them well, packing them tightly so he could build them tall.

            

            As he built his walls he was also digging the moat around his castle.  But as the walls became higher and higher and the moat became deeper and deeper, he couldn’t reach any more sand to build with.  So he started scooping sand from the floor of his castle, and adding it to his walls.  Soon he was standing on his tiptoes, and stretching up as far as he could, adding more sand.

            When he had dug so far down that he couldn’t build his walls any higher, he declared his castle finished, and sat down in the hole he had dug, and looked up, admiringly, at his walls.

            And he sat there.

            Then some other kids walked by, and kicked it down, on top of him. 

            They weren’t bad kids, just kids.  And one of them wrote with his toes in the sand, “God Bless America.”