Village statue

In the village square there was a statue. Nobody was quite sure why it was there or who had put it there, but it had been there since before anyone could remember. Even old Thomas knew nothing about it and that was unusual, as Old Thomas knew everything about the village. He knew who grew the best potatoes and when they had done it. He knew the history of every family living there and lots of families that didn’t live there any more. He could tell you who had built the bridge over the creek and not only the current bridge, but also the one before that which had been swept away in the flood of ’87 and the one before that which had caught fire and burnt down in ‘43. If it had happened in the village or to the village or about the village, he knew it. Except for this statue, he had his ideas if course, but then everyone in the village had a theory about the statue. Some said it the power and strength of a storm, while others said it was the beauty of a sunset over a lake and yet a third group thought it was like a flight of swans flying home at evening. But one thing that all the villagers agreed on was that it was the most beautiful statue in the world and they had talked about it ever since they could remember.
It was, indeed a beautiful thing, tall and elegant, carved in Carrara Marble white and pure, with never a flaw to be seen. Round, like a tall column, with an elaborate cap on the top, rather like the head on a Corinthian column, but more ornate. It stood on a plinth of black granite, which had delicate scrollwork around the base and filigree work in the top, just under the white marble. The fame of the statue had spread far and wide throughout the land and people came from other villages just to see it. Simply to stand there and admire it’s beauty. And stand they did, stand there all day with mouths wide open, just looking. Getting in the road of honest folks going about their business, causing all sorts of problems for the people who lived there. And when they grew cold or weary or ran out of money, they would walk the long miles back to their own villages and tell their friends what they had seen.
The trouble was that each visitor had a different idea of what the statue really was. Just like the people who lived in the village with the statue. They each had their own thoughts and each was quite certain that he was right, so it is only natural and quite understandable that the visitors would each have their own thoughts as well and when they told the people what they had seen in this far off village, well each village was told a different story. So each village had it’s own ideas about what the beautiful statue really was. And each village was quite sure that it was right; after all hadn’t one of their own actually seen the statue with his own eyes and he must surely know.
Now I know what the statue really was and I’ll let you in on the secret. The statue was actually the perfection of mankind, it was man made complete, as man was supposed to be. It had, within itself, all the things that the villagers thought it was. It had the power and strength of a storm, it was the beauty of a sunset over a lake and it was like a flight of swans flying home at evening. All of these things and more were in that statue. But because the people were too self-centred, they couldn’t see that, they failed to understand what it really was and, in their own minds, turned it into something that is was not. The people who lived in the village and the visitors who came to look were all the same, none of them could see what the statue really was and they each thought it was something else. The trouble with this is that each visitor went back to his own village and told the others something that was not quite right. The villagers only got part of the story. One village believed that the statue was a group of swans flying home while another village was convinced that it was a frightening storm. Another village was quite sure that it was a beautiful sunset over a lake. Each village, as you can see, had part of the story, a little bit of the truth but not all of it.
When the different villages got together to buy and sell goods, they discussed this wonderful far off statue among themselves. And each village argued that they had the secret of what the statue really was. And each village was convinced that it was right and that all the other villages were wrong and that they just didn’t understand what it was all about. Some of the discussions became quite heated and even blows were struck and soon the whole district was in an uproar over this statue. Village was fighting village. In the village called Roman Catholic, cottages were being burnt down, some one tipped a load of manure down the Baptist village well, all the Anglican hayricks were set alight and the Quaker hen houses were broken open and all the chooks eaten by the Mormon foxes. In one night, all of the sheep disappeared from the village of Uniting Church, every one of them. Just vanished, stolen right away. The fuss and bother was huge, the entire district was in turmoil and all because the people could not see the truth that was in front of them