The Man and the Hole

There was a man who found a hollow in the earth.

It was no trap, no snare set for him,

but a shallow dip, plain as day,

where the soil gave way to the press of a foot.

He stepped down, curious.

He pressed his heel into the dirt.

The earth crumbled easily,

and in his hand was a shovel.

It was light.

It fit him well.

And with a laugh he struck the ground.

The digging was joy at first—

the rhythm of blade to soil,

the scent of the earth rising,

a secret place growing around him.

It was his own,

a pit fashioned by his pleasure.

When he tired, he would look up.

The rim was close,

sunlight still brushing his face.

He could have climbed out with ease,

but the shovel was near,

and digging was simple,

so he bent again to the work.

Seasons passed.

The pit deepened.

Its walls grew steep.

The air grew heavy,

but the man knew no trade but digging,

so he widened the grave of his own desire.

Sometimes in the quiet,

he whispered to himself,

This hole is my home.

Other times he trembled,

for the silence answered back,

This hole is your end.

He began to see no escape.

His arms ached with the weight of the shovel,

yet he could not release it.

Better the familiar labor,

he thought,

than the climb he did not know.

But then,

one day,

he saw it.

A thread of light at the lip of the pit.

Not blinding, not bold,

but steady as a candle in a storm.

He blinked, rubbed his eyes,

and found it remained.

So he cried out.

Not with eloquence,

but with the raw plea of a drowning soul:

“Help me.”

The light did not argue.

It did not scold.

It reached.

Invisible hands, strong as stone,

grasped him where the shovel could not.

They drew him upward,

past the walls he had carved with his own rebellion,

past the shadows that whispered of death,

past the earth that still longed to swallow him.

At last he stood upon solid ground.

The sun struck his face.

The air was clean again.

The pit gaped behind him,

a wound in the earth,

a testimony.

He kept the shovel.

Not to dig again,

but as a relic,

a memory of folly,

a warning to his heart.

For he had learned:

The pleasures of digging are sweet for a moment,

but the hole always deepens.

The pit has no bottom

except death.

Yet the Light.

the Light has no shadow,

and those who call to it are not left in the dark.