Shibboleth

Now there was a gate, and thou camest unto it, seeking to pass over unto that which was thine own — thy letters, and thy money, and the record of all thy days, laid up beyond the gate; and there was no way in save one only: thou must say the word.

And the keeper of the gate said unto thee, Say now thy word, that I may know thee, and let thee pass over. And thou openedst thy mouth to say it — for surely thou hadst known it, it was thine own word, chosen by thine own hand in a day now gone from thee — and behold, it was fled. Or thou saidst a word, the word whereof thou wast most certain, and the keeper said, It is not right; that is not the word; thou shalt not pass.

And thou triedst again, and framedst the word this way and that: adding a letter, and taking one away; a mark here, a number there; the word as it was in the old days, and the word as thou hadst surely changed it. And every time the keeper said, It is not right. And it barred the ford against thee, and would not be entreated.

For it fell out unto thee as it fell to them at the passages of Jordan. When a man came unto the ford that would go over, the keepers said unto him, Say now Shibboleth. And if he could not frame to pronounce it right, but said Sibboleth — one letter, no more, one small slip of the tongue — they took him, and he passed not over. So it is at thy gate: one character mistaken, one letter out of its place, and thou art reckoned a stranger before thine own door, and turned back from thine own goods; and there is no reasoning with the keeper. It knoweth not thy face, nor thy need, nor that the things beyond are truly thine. It knoweth the word only. And thou hast not the word.

Then art thou driven unto the second gate, which they call the recovering of the word; and there they require of thee a further proof, and yet another, that thou art indeed thyself: a sign sent secretly unto thy lamp, a question out of thy childhood, the name of the street wherein thou wast a child, the maiden name of thy mother. Gate beyond gate, each set to guard the last, each demanding a word thou art no longer sure thou rememberest aright.

And thou standest at the passages of thine own Jordan, that thou thyself didst dig, and didst wall, and didst set a keeper over — locked out now of all that is thine, unable to say the one word that would carry thee across, and no keeper in all that place will take thy meaning for the word, nor thy face for a face it knows, nor thy need for proof of anything at all.

It may be so. It may not.