Once there was a knight who was dedicated to the wind. They were swift and clever, cold and calculating, and above all they were decisive in their actions. The knight was dedicated to the wind and may as well have been created from the wind, considering how well their gifts matched their dedication. They knew what they were best at, and what came naturally to them, and those two were entirely the same thing. The knight was proud of their skill and purpose, and wore a winged helmet to demonstrate both what they were and what they were dedicated to.
One day, not in a battle but on the outskirts of what might become a battle should one person or another make the wrong move or say the wrong thing, the knight saw a famed magical chalice, half-buried in the earth. The knight knew the chalice was important, and – being clever and decisive – dug it up at once. And in so doing, this dedicant to the winds who may as well have been of the winds became an avatar of something very different. In that moment, the knight knew they had taken up a symbol of open, diplomatic speech, of vulnerable leadership, and of nourishing connection. They held a symbol of the heart that would change the world, and their heart, forever.
Now, it would be nice, or at least convenient, to say that the knight was changed immediately by taking up the chalice, but they weren’t (this magic didn’t work that way, or at least it didn’t work that way for the knight). The knight held virtues within that had served them well, and those virtues were almost completely unsuited to the duty they had assumed when retrieving the chalice from the earth. The knight turned from the skirmish, suddenly feeling no taste for battle, and let their horse go where it wished for a while, furiously thinking about how to get out of this mess. You see, all of their training and dedication and being had been in preparation for one thing, and now they were faced with something completely different. Important, and holy, yes, but even that felt almost insulting to the knight. Imagine meeting a god and being told, “This is the divine purpose that I charge you with. Do it, but use none of what you already know, and none of the gifts you have honed your whole life.”
The knight seethed as they rode aimlessly for what felt like a long while. After enough time had passed for them to just start to wonder whether they could find the way home, they entered a valley, and at the bottom of that valley was a stream. The knight rode on with uncharacteristic caution, and as they neared the stream they began to think back to what they had learned from the wind as their dedicant, servant, and champion. More, they thought back to the feeling of that learning, and the sense that there was more to know than they could possibly consume, and they began to feel a little spark of interest. If the winds had taught them to be swift and decisive and clever, what lessons might the waters hold?
At length the knight spoke to no one in particular. “I’ll probably wind up being grateful for this opportunity one day,” they muttered as they swung down from the horse and began to approach the stream, “but for now, the best I can do is `willing.'”
And somewhere, whether in their heart or their ears or their bones, the knight heard the response from the chalice (or the stream, or the horse):
“That’ll do for a start.”