The Tears Of Nature (Τα Δάκρυα της Φύσης)

-From The Meletic Tales.

In the southern hills of Messenia, nestled amongst the olive groves and cypress trees, there stood an ancestral village once so verdant that poets likened its meadows to Elysium. The rivers had once sung through its abundant fields. The fig trees had bowed with their fruit, but now, the land cracked like old parchment. Dust smothered the vines. The once-murmuring streams had become silent scars across the earth. No rain had come in over a year.

At first, the villagers did what their ancestors had always done. They lit sacred fires. They offered lambs, oil, wine, and honey at the temple of Demeter. They called to Zeus Ombrios, He who brings rain. They danced and chanted until their voices cracked, but the heavens remained silent. The sun loomed high, unblinking and unforgiving.

Children cried in their sleep. Women clutched dried loaves to their chests. Men counted their failing harvests in silence. Fear took root deeper than any olive tree.

Then one morning, as the village stirred under another sweltering dawn, a figure appeared on the dusty road—a lone, elderly man walking with measured pace, a staff of olivewood in one hand and a small satchel slung over his back. His hair was white, his skin darkened by long exposure to the elements, and his robe hung loose from his thin frame. He did not seem like a wanderer, nor a prophet, nor a beggar, yet he bore the calm of one who had nothing to ask for.

No one greeted him. The villagers had grown wary of strangers. Still, he walked through the heart of the village and stopped at the foot of the dry fountain. There, he sat in silence, watching the sky as though listening to something others could not hear. His name was Aristophanes.

A small boy, Philippos, the potter’s son, crept close and said, ‘Old man, what are you looking for in the sky? There’s nothing there’.

The old man turned and smiled. His eyes were grey and steady. ‘I do not look for anything. I simply observe,’ he replied.

Philippos frowned. ‘My father says only fools observe the sky in drought’.

‘Perhaps, but perhaps fools are the ones who stop observing it altogether’, the old man said.

Word of the stranger spread. Some believed he was a wandering priest from an obscure cult. Others thought him touched by the gods—or madness, but he asked for nothing. He spoke to no altar. He made no grand pronouncements. He simply watched and waited.

Eventually, curiosity overcame suspicion. A group gathered in the dusty square, led by Ploutarkhos, the elder of the council. With his staff in one hand and scepticism in his eyes, he addressed the stranger.

‘You’ve wandered into a curst place, old man. There’s no water here. No rain. The gods have turned their backs’.

Aristophanes inclined his head. ‘Has it occurred to you that it is not the gods who have turned, but the people?’

A hush suddenly fell.

‘What do you mean by that?’ Asked Althea, a farmer’s widow. Her hands were calloused, her face drawn from months of hunger. ‘We have given offerings. We have prayed. We have obeyed the rites that our ancestors taught us’.

‘You have obeyed fear. Not understanding’, Aristophanes answered.

There were murmurs of protest, but something in his voice stilled them.

‘Who are you, then?’ Ploutarkhos demanded. ‘A priest without a god?’

‘I am called Aristophanes. I follow not gods, but the Logos—the order behind all things’, he said to them.

‘Logos?’ Repeated another. ‘What order is there in this ruin?’

‘An order not shaped by your wishes, but one that has always been—quiet, impartial and flowing. Nature does not obey panic. She responds to balance’, said Aristophanes.

‘Are you saying we caused this drought?’ Ploutarkhos growled.

‘Not directly, but you have not lived with the earth. You have only lived from it. You draw and demand. You do not replenish. You do not observe. Nature gives, but she is not infinite. She has rhythm, like breath. When you ignore her rhythm, she withdraws’, spoke Aristophanes.

Silence.

‘So, we are to blame?’ Althea whispered.

Aristophanes shook his head. ‘Not blame. That word belongs to punishment. This is not punishment. It is mere consequence in its nature’.

Many people turned away, unwilling to hear more, yet others lingered.

Aristophanes remained. He spoke little, but he helped. He fixed broken carts. He gathered herbs from rocky places. He sat with the children and taught them the names of trees, of winds and of insects that lived in the cracks of dry stone.

Philippos followed him constantly. ‘Why do you always walk barefoot, even on the hot path?’ The boy asked one day.

‘So that I may feel the earth as she is. Not as I wish her to be’, Aristophanes responded.

Day by day, others came to him, quietly, privately. He never preached. He asked questions more than he gave answers. He taught them to see their land—not as a possession, but as a living thing. To notice where the bees no longer flew. To mark how the wind had changed its course. To understand that nature did not respond to pleading, but to alignment. He was a Meletic.

‘To Ena is the One. The whole. Everything that breathes and does not breathe, moves and does not move. You are part of it. Not masters. Not victims. Participants’, he said one evening by the fire.

‘How do we change anything if we are just participants?’ Someone asked.

‘By becoming conscious of your part. Harmony begins when one note realises it must listen to the music, not just play its own sound’, he answered.

Slowly, they changed. They began to draw water only at dawn, when the earth gave it more freely. They planted hardy legumes in place of thirsty vines. They composted waste. They stopped chopping down the oldest trees. They watched the animals and learned from their patterns.

One evening, Philippos sat beside Aristophanes beneath the pine tree on the village’s edge.

‘Do you think the rain will come back soon?’ He asked.

‘Perhaps, but it matters less than you think so', Aristophanes professed.

‘How can it not matter? Everyone is hungry’.

‘It matters, yes, but you cannot spend your life chasing the sky. You must root yourself where you are. Then, when the sky does turn, you will be ready to receive it—not as a gift, but as a return’, the old man explained.

‘You mean we must change before the rain does?’

Aristophanes nodded. ‘The world outside reflects the world within’.

The boy looked up, and for the first time, the sky seemed less cruel and more mysterious—alive, somehow, in its silence.

The weeks passed. The land remained dry, but the village became quieter, more purposeful. People shared more. They walked instead of rode. They ate less, but with greater gratitude.

Then one morning, clouds gathered over the mountains. Thick and grey clouds—not threatening, but full.

By mid-afternoon, the sky darkened. The first drop fell, then another. Then thousands.

The rain did not pour in fury. It fell gently, like a remembered promise.

People stepped outside, open-palmed. Some laughed. Others wept. Children danced barefoot in the puddles, their mouths open to the sky.

Aristophanes stood in the square, eyes closed, face turned upwards.

‘It listens, after all’, someone said.

Aristophanes opened his eyes. ‘No, it continues. We are the ones who have begun to listen’, he said.

That night, the village feasted on lentils, barley and shared stories. For the first time in over a year, they sang—not to beg, but to honour.

The next morning, Aristophanes was gone. Only his staff remained, planted in the soil near the pine. Tied to it was a small strip of cloth, upon which was written: ‘Nature does not demand. She reveals. Align, and you shall understand’.

From that day on, they never returned to the old ways. Not because of fear, but because of awareness. The drought had broken more than their fields—it had broken their illusions of mastery and belief in the gods.

In time, the streams flowed again, even though never quite as freely. The land grew, although not as wildly, but the people had changed, and that made all the difference.

The village flourished, not with abundance, but with balance. Beneath the pine tree, children still gathered to tell the story of the old man who taught them not to fear the sky, but to listen to the earth—and in doing so, taught them to listen to themselves.

They drew circles in the dust with sticks, mimicking the motion of clouds across the heavens, and said, ‘This is where Aristophanes stood when the rain came,’ or, ‘Here, he sat and taught Philippos how to read the wind’. They were children, yet in their play was a reverence deeper than any hymn. They did not speak of miracles, only of meaning. Not of gods, but of internal growth.

Amongst them, now fully grown, was Philippos. No longer a boy chasing shadows, he had become a quiet man who kept bees and planted herbs along the dry ridges. His hands bore the apparent marks of labour, but his voice retained the patience Aristophanes had once shown him.

He often sat beneath that same pine, now older, its branches fuller, its trunk still bearing the faint, healed scar where the staff had once been planted. When children asked him about the old man, he did not embellish.

‘Aristophanes was neither a magician, nor a prophet. He was a listener. That was his gift, and perhaps his wisdom’.

‘How did he know the rain would come?’ One clever child asked.

Philippos shook his head. ‘He never said it would. Only that if it did, we should be ready to receive it—not with hunger, but with humility’.

The village had changed in quiet ways. There were fewer walls and more open spaces. The wells had been deepened carefully, with stones stacked not only for strength but for beauty. The fields had been rotated to rest the soil, and grain was shared communally each harvest. The people no longer waited for omens. They watched the ants, the birds and the tilt of the sun.

Once a month, under the full moon, the villagers gathered not at the old temple—which had long since crumbled—but at the grove near the stream that now trickled softly through the reeds. They did not call it a festival. There was no sacrifice, no fire. They brought bread, lentils, figs, dates and olives. They brought songs—not hymns, but stories.

One night, as the moon cast its light across the gathering, Philippos stood before them and held up a small wooden bowl, carved from olive root. Its rim was smooth, worn by use.

‘This belonged to Aristophanes. He gave it to me the night before he left. Not with a word, just placed it in my hand. At the time, I thought it was just a bowl, but now I see it differently’.

He turned it in his hands. ‘This bowl holds water. It also holds nothing. It teaches us that emptiness is not absence—it is readiness. If we are full of panic, or fear, or pride, there is no room left in us for the flow of life. Aristophanes taught me that nature doesn’t respond to force. It responds to presence’.

Amongst the crowd, heads nodded, though no one spoke. It was the Meletic way to reflect, not to react.

A girl named Daphnis, not more than ten, raised her hand.

‘Philippos, is Aristophanes dead?’

Philippos smiled gently. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps he walks in another village. Perhaps he became the wind. Or perhaps he was always only ever here to pass something on. It is a mystery to be resolved'.

The old woman beside her added, ‘Whether or not he still walks, the teaching remains. That is enough’.

In later years, a drought returned—but the villagers did not panic as they did before.

They prepared slowly. They reduced what they took, and increased what they returned. They stored grain not just in granaries, but in seed. They taught the children how to collect dew from leaves in the morning. They drank together instead of apart.

They no longer spoke of drought as punishment. They called it a silence. A waiting, and in that silence, they listened.

One of the boys, now grown and named Alexios, left the village in his thirtieth year. He travelled across the Peloponnese and taught in small towns, not as a priest or philosopher, but as a humble speaker of the Meletic way. He never claimed to be a disciple, only someone who had once been changed by quiet words spoken beneath a pine tree.

In Attica, He helped a group of fishermen build terraces along the coastline to prevent soil erosion. In Phocis, he showed shepherds how to restore native shrubs to hold the hillside firm. In each place, he listened first, then spoke. He never offered certainty. Only questions.

‘What do you take from the land?’ He would ask.

‘What do you return?’

‘What does your earth need when it is not giving?’

Some people called him a wise man. Others a mere fool. Those who sat with him long enough found themselves walking more slowly, breathing more deeply. In time, he returned to Messenia, older, but with a quiet fire still in his eyes.

When he returned, the pine tree was taller than any house in the village.

He sat beside it, and Philippos—grey now, but still gentle—welcomed him home.

‘What did you find out there?’ Philippos asked as they drank water from earthen cups.

‘That every village has its own drought. Some in the soil. Some in the heart. Some in thought, but also that every village contains what it needs to heal, if only it listens’, Alexios said.

‘And did they?’

‘Some did. Some didn’t. A few asked the right questions, and that, I think is how change begins’.

The two men sat in silence. A breeze stirred the pine needles above them.

In time, the tale of Aristophanes became part of the village’s seasonal teaching. Not a myth, but a memory. A practice. He was not venerated. He was remembered.

There was no shrine, only the tree. There was no doctrine, only the questions he left behind. With each generation, the questions deepened.

A young woman named Lysa, who kept the village’s records, began carving Aristophanes’ sayings onto clay tablets—short, precise, etched with care: ‘The rain does not fall for your fear. It falls when the rhythm calls it’.
‘To Ena is not a god. It is the unfolding. The tide within all things’.
‘You do not own the land. You participate in it’.

These tablets were not stored in a temple but placed along the paths to the fields, hung on the walls of the communal hall, and given to children to copy on their first day of learning.

In the seventh decade after Aristophanes' arrival, a travelling scholar from Corinth stopped in the village. He marvelled at the well-managed terraces, the clean stream, the harmonious way the people lived.

‘Who governs this place?’ He asked.

An old woman replied, ‘The earth does’.

He scoffed. ‘No laws? No magistrates?’

‘We have customs, rooted in observation. Not rules to bind, but reminders to align’.

The scholar stayed a week and left changed. In his scrolls, he wrote: 'I have seen no altars, yet I have witnessed reverence. I have heard no prayers, yet I have seen practice. These people live not to dominate nature but to dwell with it. If this is not wisdom, then wisdom may not exist'.

The tears of nature became not just a tale, but a seed—planted in the soul of those willing to tend it.

It taught that droughts may come again, as they always have. That the sky may withhold, the soil may harden, the streams may dry, but that human beings, when they shed pride and listen, can become not masters of the earth, but caretakers.

The pine tree still stands. Its shadow stretches across soil made rich by restraint. Its roots drink from streams guided, not stolen. Its branches sway in a natural rhythm with a sky that no longer terrifies but teaches one.

Beneath it, the children still gather—sticks in hand, dust on their knees, wonder in their eyes. Not to wait for divine miracles. Not to beg for rain, but to remember.

They listen to the wind as Aristophanes once did. They watch the patterns in the clouds, the ants crossing stones, the bend of trees in the breeze. In their listening, they do not ask the earth to change for them—they change for the earth.

For in the heart of Meleticism is not conquest, but connection. Not dominion, but dwelling.

And so, the One continues—not above, but within.

Each season brings its own silence, its own lesson. When the wind is still, they listen more closely. When the rains are late, they do not curse, but prepare. When the earth bears fruit again, they give thanks—not with sacrifice, but with care.

Some people say the pine tree hums when the breeze moves just right. Others say it is the voice of Aristophanes, still teaching, still guiding, but most believe it is the world itself, reminding them.

To live gently. To live attentively, and to honour the rhythm that flows through all existential things.

Even in old age, the villagers walk the fields slowly, not out of frailty, but of reverence. They speak softly to the olive trees, not expecting answers, but acknowledging presence. When children are born, they are brought beneath the pine—not to be blest, but to begin listening.

There are no statues of Aristophanes, no scrolls naming him a saint. Only the lived memory of a man who showed them that the sky does not need appeasing—only understanding.

In that understanding, they find peace. Not in abundance, but in awareness. Not in dominion, but in deep belonging.

The village endures—not by fortune or favour, but by flow. They do not fear what comes, nor cling to what passes. They simply live, as a part of the One.

In Meleticism, it is not divine anger that brings drought, nor prayer that brings rain—but understanding of the Logos that restores harmony. Nature weeps not in vengeance, but in the rhythm of To Ena, the One. The tears of nature fall not to cleanse, but to awaken life.

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