“Be careful!  That water is deep!”

So said a girl whom I was desperately hoping to impress.  She was very pretty and nice, but I was much older than she was.  After all, I was seven and she was only six-and-a-half!

I was staying with my brother and his wife and daughter.  We had gone over to the house belonging to a friend of my brother. It was a pretty place out in the country, and they had an old-fashioned spring house.

I suppose that I should spare you the trouble of googling the term “spring house.”  You almost never see them anymore, but once upon a time, they were fairly common.

In the olden days, if you had a nice spring of water near your house, you could build a small structure over it.  This structure was called a spring house.  It protected your spring from leaves and other debris.  You could use the spring for drinking or cooking or to keep things chilled.

This particular spring house was at the edge of the yard.  My niece and the younger girl in the story had been “playing croquet,” which probably consisted of us trying to hit the balls in a more or less straight line.  One of us (probably me) had hit a ball that rolled down the hill and through a very small hole and (Ker plunk!) into the spring.

The young lady of the house thought we should go tell her parents, but I, being much older and more mature, took a dim view of involving adults when it was at all possible.  Besides, my arms were much longer than the girl’s arms.  I could reach that croquet ball in the spring.  After all, the water was very clear, and the ball was plainly visible just a few inches below the surface.

Or so I thought!  I figured that the young lady’s warning was an exaggeration.  “Girl’s are bad about that,” I thought to myself.  I stretched out on the spring house floor, and thrust my arm into the chilly water.

I couldn’t touch the ball.  Furthermore, now that I had my arm in the water, I could see the ball was much deeper than I could reach.

So, the adults were involved after all.  Her father came down to the spring house.  Even he had to get a long-handled shovel to scoop the ball out of the water.  The spring was at least five feet deep!  The young lady’s warning had been spot on.

That was the end of our croquet game, but it isn’t the end of the story.  Like all good stories, it doesn’t have an ending.  The truth is, I often think of that incident.  It haunts me to this day.  But it’s a good haunting.

A friend and I were chatting on the phone the other day, and he mentioned a Buddhist book he was rereading, and a couple of the simple truths that the author was pointing out.

My friend and I agreed that simple truths are usually also the deepest truths.  We also agreed that they are the ones we need to be reminded of on a regular basis.

And the memory of the spring house came back to me.  I told my friend the story, and then I said, “ You know, I think that truths are kind of like that croquet ball in the spring house.  They may seem very accessible, but they lie in deep clear water.  We can think that we can easily grasp them, but that is not so.”

And, to press the analogy a bit, there is always danger in thinking that what appears within easy reach is, in reality, dangerously deep.  A “simple” truth can drown the unwary.  The antidote?  We need to respect both the simplicity and the profundity of Truth.

There is a mystery to all truth, even the simplest.  Perhaps, the mystery is the deepest in the simplest truths.

Why does my wife love me?  Because she does.  Simple, but profoundly mysterious!

How can admitting my powerlessness over my addiction be the first step toward recovery?  Who knows?  But it is!

These and a million other not-so-simple simple truths surround us all the time.  The water surrounding these truths is so clear that you would swear that you can easily grasp these truths.  But ultimately, truths are not made to be grasped.  Neither your arms nor your mind are long enough or strong enough to entirely grasp them.  But although they may not be grasped, they can be lived out.  And that is enough.