"God's Big Hat"

          (quoted in "The Wisdom of No Escape" -by Pema Chodron)

     There was a god who knew how men and women love to believe things to
be true and make clubs and religions and political systems with the people who
agree with them. They just love to make something out of nothing and then 
write its name on a big banner and march down the street waving it and
yelling and screaming, only to have people who believe the opposite come
toward them with their banner, yelling and screaming.
     This god decided to try to prove a point about the human condition so 
that people might, in seeing the absurdity of it, have a good laugh.
     He constructed a big hat divided right down the middle, the left side
of which was brilliant blue and the right side flaming red. Then he went
to a place where many people were working in the fields on the left side
of a road and many other people were working in the fields on the right side 
of the road.
     There the god manifested in all his glory; no one could miss him. Big 
and radiant, wearing his hat, he walked straight down the road. All the
people on the right side of the road dropped their hoes and looked up at
this god; all the people on the left side of the road did the same. Everybody
was amazed. Then he disappeared.
     Everyone shouted, "We saw God! We saw God!" They were all full of joy,
until someone on the left said, "There he was in all his radiance and in
his red hat!" And people on the right said, "No, he had on a blue hat."
This disagreement escalated until the people built walls and began to
throw stones at each other.
     Then the god appeared again. This time he walked in the other
direction and then disappeared. Now all the people looked at each other and
the ones
on the right said, "Ah, you were right, he did have on a red hat. We're 
sorry, we just saw incorrectly. You were right and we were wrong." The ones
on the other side said, "No, no. You were right. We were wrong." At this
point they didn't know whether to fight or to make friends. Most of them
were completely puzzled by the situation.
     Then the god appeared again. This time he stood in the middle and he
turned to the left and then he turned to the right, and everyone started 
to laugh.