Stories hold answers and teachings, be it a parable or a fairy story, and The Prodigal Son is just one of many. What does it teach? The story of humanity and its climb from savagery to the stars is a map that shows a way back once we have learned the lesson. The prodigal had to leave in order to find the way back. It’s uncomfortable, humiliating, and full of self-doubt but it’s there.Evolution is a school of hard knocks and every life form goes through it. Every living creature existing in this time, this NOW, has got to this point by evolving. By growing in wisdom, adapting to different climates, ways of living, and coping with crises of every kind. Life itself is a prodigal… learning what forms, foods, habitats, and climates can be used, developed, grown and shared. Compare how early humanity emerging from the disappearing Ice Age, with an ordinary everyday human being in the twenty first century. YET! We are still, in one sense of the word… on the way HOME. We have a long way to go yet, before we reach the peak of what we CAN achieve. But at least the story of the Prodigal offers hope, an incentive to keep trying, keep learning, keep going forward and upward.