The impossible Task

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 26, 2015

Second in our fairy tale sermon series, “Rumpelstiltskin” tells the story of a girl asked to spin straw into gold. She meets a trickster who solves her problem, but at what price? Rev. Meg recalls the tale of “The Impossible Task.”

Rumpelstiltskin

Once there was a miller who was poor, but who had a beautiful daughter. Now it happened that he had to go and speak to the king, and in order to make himself appear important he said to him, “I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold.”

The king said to the miller, “That is an art which pleases me well, if your daughter is as clever as you say, bring her tomorrow to my palace, and I will put her to the test.”

And when the girl was brought to him he took her into a room which was quite full of straw, gave her a spinning-wheel and a reel, and said, “Now set to work, and if by tomorrow morning early you have not spun this straw into gold during the night, you must die.”

Thereupon he himself locked up the room, and left her in it alone. So there sat the poor miller’s daughter, and for the life of her could not tell what to do, she had no idea how straw could be spun into gold, and she grew more and more frightened, until at last she began to weep.

But all at once the door opened, and in came a little man, and said, “Good evening, mistress miller, why are you crying so?”

“Alas,” answered the girl, “I have to spin straw into gold, and I do not know how to do it.”

“What will you give me,” said the manikin, “if I do it for you?”

“My necklace,” said the girl.

The little man took the necklace, seated himself in front of the wheel, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three turns, and the reel was full, then he put another on, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three times round, and the second was full too. And so it went on until the morning, when all the straw was spun, and all the reels were full of gold.

By daybreak the king was already there, and when he saw the gold he was astonished and delighted, but his heart became only more greedy. He had the miller’s daughter taken into another room full of straw, which was much larger, and commanded her to spin that also in one night if she valued her life. The girl knew not how to help herself, and was crying, when the door opened again, and the little man appeared, and said, “What will you give me if I spin that straw into gold for you?”

“The ring on my finger,” answered the girl.

The little man took the ring, again began to turn the wheel, and by morning had spun all the straw into glittering gold.

The king rejoiced beyond measure at the sight, but still he had not gold enough, and he had the miller’s daughter taken into a still larger room full of straw, and said, “You must spin this, too, in the course of this night, but if you succeed, you shall be my wife.”

Even if she be a miller’s daughter, thought he, I could not find a richer wife in the whole world.

When the girl was alone the manikin came again for the third time, and said, “What will you give me if I spin the straw for you this time also?”

“I have nothing left that I could give,” answered the girl.

“Then promise me, if you should become queen, to give me your first child.”

Who knows whether that will ever happen, thought the miller’s daughter, and, not knowing how else to help herself in this strait, she promised the manikin what he wanted, and for that he once more spun the straw into gold.

And when the king came in the morning, and found all as he had wished, he took her in marriage, and the pretty miller’s daughter became a queen.

A year after, she brought a beautiful child into the world, and she never gave a thought to the manikin. But suddenly he came into her room, and said, “Now give me what you promised.”

The queen was horror-struck, and offered the manikin all the riches of the kingdom if he would leave her the child. But the manikin said, “No, something alive is dearer to me than all the treasures in the world.”

Then the queen began to lament and cry, so that the manikin pitied her.

“I will give you three days, time,” said he, “if by that time you find out my name, then shall you keep your child.”

So the queen thought the whole night of all the names that she had ever heard, and she sent a messenger over the country to inquire, far and wide, for any other names that there might be. When the manikin came the next day, she began with Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar, and said all the names she knew, one after another, but to every one the little man said, “That is not my name.”

On the second day she had inquiries made in the neighborhood as to the names of the people there, and she repeated to the manikin the most uncommon and curious. Perhaps your name is Shortribs, or Sheepshanks, or Laceleg, but he always answered, “That is not my name.”

On the third day the messenger came back again, and said, “I have not been able to find a single new name, but as I came to a high mountain at the end of the forest, where the fox and the hare bid each other good night, there I saw a little house, and before the house a fire was burning, and round about the fire quite a ridiculous little man was jumping, he hopped upon one leg, and shouted –

‘Today I bake, tomorrow brew, the next I’ll have the young queen’s child. Ha, glad am I that no one knew that Rumpelstiltskin I am styled.'”

You may imagine how glad the queen was when she heard the name. And when soon afterwards the little man came in, and asked, “Now, mistress queen, what is my name?”

At first she said, “Is your name Conrad?”

“No.”

“Is your name Harry?”

“No.”

“Perhaps your name is Rumpelstiltskin?”

“The devil has told you that! The devil has told you that,” cried the little man, and in his anger he plunged his right foot so deep into the earth that his whole leg went in, and then in rage he pulled at his left leg so hard with both hands that he tore himself in two.

Sermon

When I was in my twenties I studied dream interpretation with a Jungian analyst who had retired from CT to the mountains near Asheville, NC. She had an enormous Bernese Mountain dog named Rigi who would lean against your knee while you talked. I would bring my dreams to her and she would teach me using my own material. We were discussing the meaning of a dream, and I’d come up with two or three things it could have meant to my life. She was nodding. “Well, is it this one or this other one, do you think?” I asked her. Meg, it’s not usually either/or, she said. It’s often both/and. Or, yes, all.

Here is a young woman who finds herself in trouble because her father bragged – lied – about how gifted she was. “She can spin straw into gold,” he told the king, and she said nothing. Not a peep. Was she intimidated? Scared of her father? Didn’t want to embarrass him? Did she hope that somehow she could figure it out? Did she like that description of herself? The king puts her in the room, not with a sweet “See what you can do, missy,” but “If you don’t make this happen, you’ll die.” Shut into the room full of straw, and tried a couple of spins and realized she couldn’t figure it out.

Sandra Cisneros writes about being in the south of France as a penniless grad student, being invited for dinner by another Latino couple who were going to serve Mexican food. Her hosts assumed she could make tortillas because she was Mexican. Her mother was born in Chicago, and her mother’s people were country folk who made flour tortillas. Her father’s people were middle class from Mexico City, and they went to the corner store for corn tortillas. She had never made one in her life. They tossed corn flour at her and told her to go for it. She thought of that poor girl in the roomful of straw. Then she figured it out. They weren’t pretty, but they tasted ok, her first tortillas.

The Impossible Task is a trope that appears in tales of every culture. The labors of Hercules, Cinderella having to separate spilled peas and lentils before she can go to the ball, Lucy and Ethel at the candy factory.

Our girl broke straw and wept, more and more desperate. No little birds came fluttering in, like they did with Cinderella. She hadn’t helped some ants who came to save the day. She had no kindly fairy godmother who would help her for free.

Her desperation calls out to a little gremlin who appears at her side and offers to help. He asks what she’ll give him to do the job. She gives him her necklace. He spins all of the straw in to lustrous, gleaming gold. The king is pleased. Her father is pleased. How delicious! She gets to keep her life. Does she come clean? No. She lets herself get locked into a larger room with more straw. Straw is good, and it has its uses, but it’s not gold, surely, and the king wanted more gold. Daddy wasn’t willing to rescue his special child, and so she found herself in tears again, faced with an impossible task. The little man comes back, takes her ring this time, and spins the straw into gold. The king and the girl’s dad are so happy! She’s so miserable!

This is a familiar situation to so many of us, especially when we’re young. Over our heads, expectations seeming to force us into taking on more than we can do. We accomplish seemly impossible things, pull them out somehow, with the help of some inspiration, some little bit of magic, some superhuman leap. We write the paper, we pull the all-nighter, we take care of our parent’s emotional needs even though we are only a kid, we close the deal.

It’s a triumph. But it costs. I’m not saying that calling upon that little bit of magic, that superhuman effort, is bad. I’m not saying it’s good. As my teaching analyst would have said, “Meg, it’s a just-so story.” It’s just so. She keeps going. With the final impossible task she is offered the life of her dreams. The stakes have been raised. You will be queen. If there is a child from this marriage, you will give it to me.

She doesn’t know whether the king will marry her, or if she’ll have a child, so she finds herself making a promise. She makes a vow, but doesn’t have all the information. He accomplishes this last impossible task, and the king marries her. He’s so happy about all that gold. She has a child, and loves that child with the power of a parent to love a child. Did she ever think about the little magic man? Who knows? One day, though, he appeared. He said he was there to claim his prize. She offers him necklaces and rings beyond measure, but he wants this love of her life, heart of her heart.

How do you get out of such a bargain? It’s like all the Appalachian Jack tales where Jack has made a deal with the devil to sell his soul. Desperate people do desperate things. When you’re backed into a corner you might marry someone you shouldn’t marry, you might do a crime if you think it will get you out of your mess, you might borrow money from a payday lender, or sell your soul to the devil. Robert Johnson, the blues man, was supposed to have done that. I found an article in a Fantasy magazine about how to cheat the devil if you’d sold your soul and you wanted it back. This little man was a kindly magic man, I think. He gave the queen three days to do the research and find out his name. If she could tell him his name in three days, she could keep her child. I don’t know why he gave her three days. He was within his rights to claim the child right away, but this is how the story goes. The queen is part of us, and the little magic man is part of us. So is the king, and the straw, and the gold. This is a story about naming, about finding your power. She sends her researchers throughout the kingdom to find her answer. As you heard in the story for all ages, for the next two nights the little magic man comes to her to find out if she’s learned his name. She cannot guess it. The third day, though, she’s gotten her answer from one of her hunters, who heard the little man gloating while dancing around his house. She pretends not to know it, but then she nails it!

He gets so mad that he stamps his foot so hard the earth swallows him up and he is never seen again.

Some scholars say this is a story that arose out of the anxiety created by the Industrial Revolution. Girls were leaving their families and working for the first time. They were making gold for the factory owners and they had their own money for the first time. Maybe folks were worried that it would hurt the children. Maybe that it would give the girls too much power. In a Patriarchal culture, independence in females has always caused anxiety.

Or it could be a story about growing up, figuring something out. I think this is a story of the beginning of a journey of the soul. The beginning of a journey from the desperate need to please, the willingness to submit to the expectations of others, at great cost to oneself. The queen has made the journey from scared young woman trying to please everyone to claiming her woman hood, and using all the resources as her command to protect her child and save her own life. She did it by tackling a task that was too much for her: transforming everyday ordinary material into something of value. She needed help doing it, and that help cost her. Lots of us face this. We throw ourselves at a goal, dig deep and make it happen. We get through school, we write books while we take care of our young children. We start businesses, we navigate relationships while working while raising families, we create art which doesn’t bring in any money to speak of, yet in stubbornness we continue and somehow, with help, we make it happen. Much is stripped away from us. We owe people. We get addicted to work or to adrenaline, we constantly balance pleasing others and finding our own authentic work. Our task is to name the beings we owe. Once we name them, they lose much of their power over us. The power of naming is strong in world tales. “The Tao which can be named is not the Tao,” says the Scripture of Taoism. Knowing the name of God is so powerful, the Jewish faith asks that one says “The Lord,” even when the letters of the name of God are there in the Scripture. Salespeople say your name over and over to try to influence you.

I was doing impossible things and realized that the name of the magic helping me was adrenaline. I was an adrenaline junkie and it was costing me. Pride is another little gremlin. I resisted the thought that I was just a human woman. I don’t know why that felt embarrassing to me. When I was a therapist, a young therapist, people would come to me saying “We’ve been through six therapists already. You are our last hope.” That used to hook me. I would work harder on people’s marriages than they did. I’d work harder on a teenager’s health than anyone else in the family would. Finally I realized what it was costing me. Then I became wiser. When people would say “We’ve been through six therapists, and you’re our last hope,” I would say “If six therapists haven’t been able to help you, I probably wont be able to either.” “Just try, ok?” “Ok, I’ll just try.” That was much better.

What is the name of the little bit of magic you use to do impossible things? It’s not bad, it’s not good, but it’s good to know what it’s costing you.

And this whole story takes an ordinary experience and gives it shine and value, it teaches us. If it sticks with you, wrestle with it for a while. If not, let it go and wait for the next one.

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