Words for Wednesday
The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles. Sadly, Delores has now closed her blog forever due to other problems.
The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.
If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along to read it and add a few encouraging words.
This month the words/prompts are supplied by Sean Jeating and can be found here
This week's words/prompts are:
1.long 2.monk 3.novice 4.spiritual 5.time
and/or:
1.ants 2.boy 3.compassion 4.stream 5.trapped
use either list or both, or mix and match, just have fun.
Charlotte's colour of the month is Carmine as seen above the text here.
My own story will hopefully appear on this blog on Friday 30th

Great words. I look forward to your story.
ReplyDeleteHere's mine. All words and colour. Really enjoyed the words this week. Thanks Sean.
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The monks in their long carmine robes added a special dimension to this 10 mile walk along the mountain trail all the way to the Mestalima Temple at the very top.
Bill was still a novice at this sort of thing and his thirty year old self would have howled with laughter at the spectacle. But it was time now. He had turned forty and had decided his life was far too shallow. Drinking and smoking his couple of spliffs most nights were sucking his creativity. He needed to focus on the spiritual and why not with a retreat to a monastery with other men. It was time to stop being trapped in the incessant picking up of the streams of strange women. To grow up. To find purpose.
The head monk, if that was who he was had registered him before the start and called him “my boy” with a look of compassion. It seemed being an important banker had no effect here.
He was midway up the mountain now, in the middle of the long line of monks and other men like himself who were going to spend a month up here.
We must all look like ants, he thought, wending our way to a mystical destination. Ants. Unimportant.
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XO
WWW
Oh! Each ant is important ...
DeleteI’ll be working on it.
ReplyDeleteI will be back with you by tomorrow. Great words
ReplyDeleteGreat story. Very visual.
ReplyDeleteIn a time long past there was an old monk who, through diligent practice, had attained a certain degree of spiritual penetration.
ReplyDeleteHe had a young novice who was about seven years old. One day the monk looked at the boy's face and saw there that he would die within the next few months. Saddened by this, he told the boy to take a long holiday and go and visit his parents. 'Take your time,' said the monk. 'Don't hurry back.' For he felt the boy should be with his family when he died.
Three months later, to his astonishment, the monk saw the boy walking back up the mountain. When he arrived he looked intently at his face and saw that the boy would now live to a ripe old age. 'Tell me everything that happened while you were away,' said the monk.
So the boy started to tell of his journey down from the mountain. He told of villages and towns he passed through, of rivers forded and mountains climbed. Then he told how one day he came upon a stream in flood. He noticed, as he tried to pick his way across the flowing stream, that a colony of ants had become trapped on a small rock in the midst of the flooding stream. Moved by compassion for these poor creatures, he took a branch of a tree and laid it across one part of the stream until it touched the little island. As the ants made their way across, the boy held the branch steady, until he was sure all the ants had escaped to dry land. Then he went on his way.
'So,' thought the old monk to himself, 'that is why the gods have lengthened his days.'