he Monks' Gift

aron Von Lodge was the head of a small country known as Lilliland near Switzerland. The time was the early 1900s.

Every spring in Lilliland the monks from a small abbey in the Alpine Mountains would come to the town square and bring the same gift to all the people. The gift was apple seeds. The monks hoped that the people would plant the apple seeds in their back yards. They wanted every family to have their own apple tree. The trees would soon grow and produce fruit for the families to use in pies, apple butter, applesauce, apple wine and other wonderful treats.

The monks' gift came about because over 1,000 years ago a small group of monks, known as the Order of St. Francis, asked the head of Lilliland for aid in establishing a small abbey in the mountains where they could live in solitude and prayer.

Baron von Lodge's ancestor provided the monks with some land for their abbey. The monks in appreciation would once a year, in the springtime, bring some apple seeds as gifts to the people from the monks of St. Francis.

The Baron had a small orchard on the castle grounds that had trees grown from the monks' apple seeds. The Baron's dining room table always had some baked goods from the apples. The wine served in the great hall of the castle was usually apple wine from the orchards.

While the monks were known for their generosity of giving gifts, they were best known for their teachings of the Golden Rule and how it applied to all men and animals on the face of the earth.

They taught that we should always be kind to each other and enjoy the natural beauty of nature and enjoy the bounty that nature provided, like the magnificent apple.

Everyone in Lilliland looked forward to the joyous visit every spring with the monks of St. Francis from high up in the Alpine Mountains.