The Moss at God’s doorstep was rust-red and tall.

“When will his step fall,” it asked softly, in a voice like pigeon feathers rubbing together, “and press me together in glad compression? I’m almost grass now, wild and too tall. It’s hard to lift myself up.”

An ant was nestled in the Moss’s dense growth. “Moss, be careful please what you ask for. God’s foot will press you down, but me with it. You’ll grow back, blessed by his touch, but I’m afraid I’ll be crushed and won’t spring back so easy.”

But many years passed, and God never came. The Moss grew tired of the ant’s ceaseless fretting, and when it finally died one morning, the Moss was relieved. “Now God can take his tread and I won’t have to worry about that ant’s anxious cries.”

One night the Moss was startled by a huge thumping sound. God was coming.

He was not naked-footed, however, but shod in sandals. And so when he stepped on the Moss, tamping him deeply down, the Moss felt a great disappointment to his roots. He had wanted nothing between himself and God: certainly not some dirty shoe-sole.

Pressed low and lonely, the Moss pined for his old friend the ant, and felt a great sorrow. Time passed and he got worse, unable to grow new patches, bent low and aching. Soon he prepared to die, never having recovered from the disappointment of the sandaled step.

Just then he felt the soothing taps of small ant-legs, all over his body, and was astonished. “I must be hallucinating after having my old friend on my mind,” thought the Moss.

“We’re real enough,” said some newborn ants, happily. “We rode in on the bottom of God’s shoe, little eggs all of us.” And sure enough, hundreds of ants had hatched, making the dying moss their home. “Thank you for giving us a place to hatch. Now Goodbye, dear Moss.”

And with that the Moss died in peace. The ants went on to find another moss patch, one miles away from the house of God and near no one’s steps, sandaled or bare.

posted by Snail at 9:16 pm