One Hundred Cloth Napkins

This is the story of 100 cloth napkins.

Once upon a time—a long, long, time ago—in the last century, there was a special kind of school. The things this school taught were not at all what other schools taught. And they were not taught so much with words and letters, but with experiences.

This school was situated in a land that not many people visited or knew about.  Getting there was troublesome, but once there it was well-worth finding because it was a lush and bountiful place.

Mind you, this was still in the days when people met in person and stayed together for long periods of time. In fact, the students who came to this school lived in and cared for the school building and the grounds round about it.

The students worked very hard. They studied strange ideas, cooked, cleaned, painted, and repaired. They dug gardens, moved boulders, and built bridges. They planted, harvested and preserved. Mornings were spent in meditation and evenings in ritual dance.

What precious little time anyone had for their own, the House Mother filled with a particular task. She set everyone to hem squares of blue cloth to make into napkins for a great feast. This was in fulfillment of a vision she had—to have matching cloth napkins for rare but special feast nights.

So the students worked diligently on their hemming, and the House Mother watched the collection of napkins grow until there were one hundred in all. Enough for all the students and all the staff and visitors.

This special task of the 100 cloth napkins could even be mapped out on an ancient and esoteric symbol called an Enneagram:

Napkins, Napkins

Years passed and students came and went. Yet the House Mother remained proud that she had been able to get one hundred matching napkins made for Feasts.

However, hazard in the form of Chaos, (one of the unacknowledged teachers at this school) also remained. And so it was, with the flow of time, the napkins moved on the esoteric symbol the House Mother had used to map-out her special napkin task.

The day came when it was time to prepare for another great feast. The House Mother went looking for the hundred napkins but could only find one or two. Where were they? She looked everywhere.

Then she began to see— here was one in the kitchen, used to wipe counters. Here were some tying back the curtains in the meditation room. A student had one on her head as a scarf. Others were using them to dust or to paint.

All that work and effort—gone!

Or maybe not. The lesson was for her alone. The Enneagram had moved:

With the help of hazard and teacher Chaos, the House Mother was able to see the futility of her attachment to the 100 cloth napkins, and let it go. The grip of identification was never quite the same for her again.