A young woman is a new dervish on the path; and also has a new romance, a new beloved.  She hasn’t seen her sweetheart in almost 2 weeks, and yet, at least on this day, she has a meeting with her Teacher. Arriving for her meeting, her Teacher sets in front of her a large crate filled with strawberries (ripe, fragrant, beautiful) with instructions to take them to a certain meadow that she is familiar with. Now, instead of her anticipated meeting, she has a chore to take care of. Great. This isn’t what she wants or expects, but wanting to be a good dervish, she heads out on her way. The meadow is 3 or 4 kilometers away, mostly uphill, and it’s already getting hot. She figures this must be some kind of test, and the strawberries must have been weighed or counted, so she doesn’t eat even one.

She plods along uphill, bitching and moaning about the dust and the heat. About the time she has had it and is thinking nothing is working out, she finally crests the trail, and comes to the edge of the meadow. As she looks across the meadow, she can’t believe her eyes. It’s her beloved, who she hasn’t seen in 2 weeks, resting on a blanket in the shade. At that moment, she realizes that the strawberries are for her and her sweetheart. She rushes across the meadow and drops the crate of strawberries onto the blanket under them and says “if I would have known that my beloved was waiting for me at the end of the trail, how different my journey would have been”.

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