Once there were six grumpy men. Their names were Alf and Lief and Ralph and Olaf and Lawrence and one that the rest called Stinky.

When they were together their favorite pastime seemed to be complaining. If it was hot, they wished it were colder. If it was morning, they grumbled that nighttime was too long away. They grumbled about their lack of money and the poor condition of their clothing and shoes.

If food was abundant, they complained about being too full yet if food were scarce they complained bitterly of hunger. They each had a gift for a particular type of complaining.

Alf could complain about the weather like no one else. His grumbling was a complete litany of weather-related ills.

Lief complained best about food. It was too hot or too cold or too spicy or too bland. Goldilocks and the bears porridge was ambrosia compared to what Lief ate.

Ralph could grumble about people best of all. This person was too happy, this one too sad, the other too loud, and that person could not he heard no matter how he tried.

Olaf didn’t like to work and knew the entirety of human ills. He was too tired to work or too sore or his lumbago was acting up or he had blisters.

Lawrence was best at grumbling about money. If he had any it was not enough, if he didn’t have any, it was not to be borne.

And then there was Stinky. Stinky was the master. He could complain about any subject whether he knew anything about it or not. His favorite phrases often began with ” . . . that’s nothing. Let me tell you about the time . . .” and finished with another whopper of a complaint.

It finally came about that the five had had all of Stinky they could stand. One black night they shouldered their meager possessions and left - leaving Stinky snoring fitfully by himself. He awoke to the rumble of thunder and was about to try and bet Alf to complain about the weather when he saw that he was alone. Grumbling to himself (what else?) he looked for his companions; friends was too strong a word.

“What sort of sorry game is this?” he wondered. “I slept too poorly for this foolishness and I am hungry as well. They will pay for their sport when I find them.”

But the five were not to be found and for the first time in many years Stinky found himself alone. At first he pretended that it did not matter and he complained aloud to himself as he walked along. But as the hours stretched to days, Stinky begin to be forlorn and his complaints gradually faded to silence.

As he sat by the side of the road wondering where he would find something to eat and feeling extremely sorry for himself, he was startled by a burst of happy song coming from around the bend in the road ahead. This merry melody maker was singing and whistling and almost shouting in happy abandon. The music makers’ voice was deep and tuneful and Stinky was sure he was about to meet some nobleman or knight upon a gallant steed. He quickly stood up so he would not be stepped on and looked up to see what person could feel so full of joy.

But his eyes dropped and his mouth fell open in astonishment as the singer came fully around the bend. No knight or nobleman this! A short bulbous shape clad in a jaunty arrangement of old clothes and rags came into sight. His huge mouth was open wide in song showing mottled skin and wrinkles and folds which threatened to bury his over large and very unattractive nose.

He stopped dead on the road and roared in a voice that was four times bigger than his body, “Well met, my friend, I am overjoyed to find you. My name is Orren and I am of Gnomish extraction and I am on my way to a family reunion. How do you find yourself this happy day?”

Stinky’s mouth closed and opened and closed again but nothing came out but some assorted gutteral grunts.

Orren threw back his enormous head and laughed long and loud, “Caught you unawares, did I? Well that happens. So how to you come to be here, my friend? What is your name and where are you bound? Tell me of your life and let me share the road with you.”

Still amazed, Stinky managed to share the essentials of his current situation. “And so now I am left along and forlorn with no friends and no prospects,” Stinky finished. The problem was that without his old friends to echo his complaints, they felt a bit thin. Self-conscious now, Stinky looked foolishly down at his old shoes.

“Friendless?!” said Orren, “never, not as long as I share the road with you. Come and travel with me for awhile, friend Stinky, and we’ll see what wonders the world has for us today!”

“Wonders?”, snorted Stinky, “The only thing I wonder is whether or not I’ll get a meal today.”

“I’ll have a meal and it will be wonderful,” said Orren. “I believe I’ll have fried chicken with roasted potatoes and peas with some apple pie for good measure.”
“And where,” Stinky said with a swallow, “will you find this wonderful meal?”
“Where? I have no idea as yet but it will come to me; just wait and see.”

Stinky pondered this hopelessly. “He’s going to get a meal but he doesn’t know where. He’s happy for no reason that I can see. I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into here,” thought Stinky as he edged nervously away from the happy gnome.

“Sir Gnome,” said Stinky, “how can you be so sure you’ll find a meal? Is there an Inn up ahead that you’re aware of? I haven’t eaten a decent meal in several days and I certainly don’t have any money to buy a meal if we find one.”

With a chuckle and a merry look, Orren replied, “Why you can have anything you want, my new friend. You only have to speak it and it will be so. Whatever I want I simply speak aloud and it happens.”

“What wonderful magic this is! How did you learn of it?”, said Stinky. But before Orren could answer, Stinky smelled an odor that caused his empty belly to clench and rumble. It was the smell of chicken frying and the smell of fresh hot bread baking and it was wonderful.

Stinky and Orren came over a small rise in the path and there before them was an amazing sight. A caravan of small horse drawn carts and wagons sat in the hollow before them. Around a blazing cook fire a band of merry travelers sat eating and drinking and talking and laughing.

Walking among them, Orren and Stinky were welcomed with shouts. “Come, make yourself comfortable and eat with us, fellow travelers.” said a small woman in a big hat.

Before they could think twice they were eating golden fried chicken and roasted potatoes and peas and when they thought they could hold no more, the woman brought out a freshly baked apple pie steaming with smells of apples and cinnamon.

After this wonderful meal, Stinky and Orren leaned back against a great oak tree. Stinky was so overwhelmed with the meal that he rapidly fell asleep; snoring and dreaming. And when he awoke the caravan was gone!
He shook Orren awake saying, “Sir Gnome, the caravan has vanished! Where have they gone?”

Orren sat up with an enourmous jaw-cracking yawn that threatened to envelop his head. With a stretch and a scratch Orren looked about him, “it matters not that they are gone - they fulfilled my wish and were on their way.”

Stinky was confused still but the memory of such a wonderful meal the night before had improved his mood to the point that he forgot to complain! As Orren seemed to be preparing to continue his journey, Stinky asked if he could continue along with him.

“Of course you may,” the gnome boomed. “I would not have it any other way. Come, my friend, let us see what wonders the day holds for us.”

As they walked together, Stinky was lost in thought. How could this gnome be so happy when he didn’t know where his next meal would come from? How did he know that he would find exactly what he expected he would find? This Orren reacted exactly opposite to the way he would react to the same circumstances.

Orren contented himself with singing happy bits of song as they traveled along a sun-dappled path overhung with bright green tree branches. He sang:

“I say what I have” most folks’ proclaim,
And since words come true,
they’ve no one to blame,
but themselves for their woes and their pain and their lack.

But “I have what I say” is what I proclaim
And since words come true,
my words bring me fame.
And fortune and a heart that is merry.

So I urge you today to consider your speech
And since words come true
your tongue you must teach
To speak only joy and wants all fulfilled
by the fruit of your tongue -
by the strength of your will.

Stinky wondered at the meaning of Orren’s song. “Orren,” he asked, “this song that you sing. Is it a child’s nursery rhyme?”

Orren laughed aloud, “I assure you, my friend it is no nursery rhyme. It is the secret of life if you let it change your thinking.”

“What can saying have to do with having? It certainly doesn’t change things. Besides to say something contrary to what is real is to doubt your senses!”
The happy gnome looked at his companion, “If you believe that then you’ll fulfill every bad thing you ever say. The law of saying works whether you believe it or not.”

Before he could reply, Stinky felt a sudden gust of wind. Looking up he saw that the summer sky was filling with large gray clouds. Distant thunder rumbled and lightning flashed ahead of them.

“Ah, now we will be soaked for sure,” grumbled Stinky. “This type of storm will leave us wet and cold - I have often seen it to be true.”

Orren chuckled, “To be sure you will be wet and chilled. However, I believe I’ll pass on such discomfort. I’m sure that there will be a shelter up ahead that will protect me.”

Walking quickly ahead, the gnome was soon out of sight around a bend in the path. Stinky simply stood there with a scowl on his face. “Humph. Foolish gnome - he’ll be just as wet as I in a few minutes! ‘Saying makes it so - Humph!’”

And in a few minutes, his words bore fruit and the sky opened up and poured down rain. It took only moments for Stinky to become thoroughly wet and miserable (which was often his state even when dry). As he trudged slowly up the road his only satisfaction was that Orren was just as wet as he and he looked forward to a hardy “I told you so”.

His wry retort died on his lips a brief time later as he came across Orren smoking his pipe and as dry as could be seated under a rock outcropping next to the road. “Friend Stinky, come in out of the rain!”, called the gnome. “Come under this shelter and begin to dry off!”

“How, why . . . .”, Stinky began to stutter. “How do you manage to always get your way!? Here I am soaked to the skin and yet you avoided the rain. We were hungry and you came across food.”

Orren didn’t laugh, he only looked thoughtfully at Stinky. “I’m wondering if you are ready to hear my secret,” the gnome said stroking his oversized nose with a finger. “I’m wondering if you are able to hear about what has become my way of life. Will you hear with an open mind? Will you reject what I have to say because it goes against common sense? Will you dismiss me because you have lived with the fruit of your beliefs for so long?”

Stinky sat quietly and considered the gnome’s words. He had been unhappy so long that misery was a way of life for him. And though he complained long and loudly, in many ways misery and unhappiness had become what he was accustomed to. Did he even want to change?

With the passing of the storm, a bright ray of sunlight pierced the clouds and, at the same time, something bright pierced his heart. And then the change came inside him - he <i>would </i>be different! He would change if it took him the rest of his life!

He turned to the silent gnome and said, “Friend Orren, your words have had a great effect on me. I look back at my life and am astounded at how much unhappiness I have invited, nay welcomed, into my life. I am ready to learn your magic. I am ready to take a new path no matter how strange it may be.”

Orren paused before he spoke and considered his words. “A wise being once said that the words that we speak are like the rain falling. Rain falling from heaven is not simply water - but it is water that falls to the earth and waters it.

The water sinking into the earth brings life to plants and animals. It accomplishes a purpose before rising again on the winds back into the heavens.
Our words are like drops of rain - they affect all the things around them. If we throw our words around carelessly, then we gather the bad fruit of careless words. If we choose the words we speak carefully, and realize that they accomplish what we say, then we reap a harvest of peace and happiness”.

Stinky pondered this for a moment, “If, Sir Orren, this is true (and I have come to believe it is), then what have I done by to myself by taking on the name of rotting plants and garbage? How have my complaints and grumblings grown up if not as the sad circumstances of my life?” Tears welled up in his eyes as he continued, “If this is true then I have wasted so many years of my life, I haven eaten the bitter fruit of careless words. How can I ever redeem my life? How can I change after so long sowing wrongful words?”

Orren looked on his friend with compassion, “Friend Stin…”. He paused, “No I will no longer call you by that name for, from this time forward, you must begin a time of new planting. You must root up the weeds that have crowded out your good harvests. And you must begin by choosing a new name for yourself, a name that reflects the way you want to see yourself. For from this beginning will new, healthy fruit grow.”

The sad man considered this for a moment. “Orren,” he said, “more than anything else I want to be rich. I don’t just mean rich in money or lands, but rich in life as I see you are. I want to bring happiness to others, to lift their load and to teach them that life and death are in the words that they choose to speak.
So I now call myself Rich, the King of Circumstances, and that will be my name from here forward. And by that name may I come to be a blessing to those I encounter in my journey through life.”

With this his face brightened and many of the old wrinkles caused by years of frowns began to fade. With a hearty laugh and a slap that threatened to dislocate his shoulder, Orren struck his new friend, Rich, with a friendly slap on the shoulders, “Now THERE’S a name to speak often and long and loud, King Rich!”

Soon afterward Rich and Orren parted ways with many mutual protestations of eternal friendship. Wherever he went now, when asked his name, his answer was, “I am Rich, King of Circumstances”. And the words he planted not only overcame his old circumstances, they began to change his new life for the better. He learned to speak good about people and events and his past and his present and especially his future. Throughout the rest of his life, whenever he would meet with others along the road of life, they invariably came away happier for having met him.

One bright summer day, as he traveled toward a meeting with his friend Orren, Rich encounterd five men seated by the side of the road. “Hail and good morning,” he shouted at them as he approached.

“What’s so good about it,” said one man, “The day is hot already and the sun will be a tiresome companion today.”

“Yes, ” said the next, “and I have not eaten in two days; even then it was cold and clotted and not fit for human consumption.”

“You all sicken me,” said the third, “I cannot for the life of me figure out why I stay with such low life companions as you.”

“I am too tired and sore to listen to this drivel,” said the fourth, “We would be happier if we had not had to work for that farmer yesterday. I am exhausted.”

“Yes, and even then we got only half the money we were promised by that stingy farmer,” said the fifth, “how was I to know he wanted a full days’ work?”

For Rich had indeed found his old “friends”, though that word now seemed very strange in his mind. As they looked at him with a mixture of displeasure and impatience, one of them paused.

Alf said, “Do we know you? There is something about you that seems familiar - but the sun is in my eyes and I may be mistaken.”

Leif and Ralph and Olaf and Lawrence stared at Rich but finally decided that they were mistaken. They knew no one with such a bright, happy, hopeful countenance.

And as for Rich, well, what do you think he did for his old “friends”?