The story begins with the King as a boy having to spend the night alone in a forest to prove his courage so he can become King.
While he’s spending the night alone….he is visited by a sacred vision. Out of the campfire appears the Holy Grail…the symbol of God’s divine grace.
And a voice said to the boy
” You shall be keeper of the Grail so that it may heal the hearts of men”
But the boy was blinded by greater visions of a life filled with power and glory and beauty.
In this state of radical amazement, he felt for a brief moment not like a boy…but invincible. like God.
So he reached into the fire to take the grail…and the grail vanished, leaving him with his hand in the fire to be terribly wounded.
Now as this boy grew older, his wound grew deeper, until one day, life for him lost its reason.
He had no faith in any man, not even in himself.
He couldn’t love, or feel loved.
he was sick with experience.
He began to die.
One day, a fool wandered into the castle, and found the King alone.
Being a fool, he was simpleminded. He didn’t see a King.
He only saw a man alone, and in pain.
He asked the King “What ails you friend?”
The King replied….
“I’m thirsty. I need some water to cool my throat.”
So the fool took a cup from beside his bed, and filled it with water…and handed it to the King.
As the King began to drink, he realized that his wound was healed. He looked in his hands, and there was the Holy Grail….that which he sought all his life.
He turned to the fool and said with amazement…
” How could you find that which my brightest and bravest could not?”
The fool replied, ” I don’t know…I only knew that you were thirsty”
-The Fisher King
