“Two Desert Fathers had been living together as hermits for many years and had never gotten into a fight. One of them said to the other, “Why don’t we do like everybody else in the world and get into a fight?” The other fellow said, “O.K., how do you do it?” He said, “Well, fights start over possessions, owning something exclusively so that the other fellow can’t have it. Let’s look around and get ourselves a possession and then have a fight over it.” So he found a brick and said, “I will put this brick between us, and I will say, ‘This is my brick,’ and you will immediately say, ‘No, it’s mine,’ and then we will get into a fight.” So the man gets the brick and puts it down between the two of them and says, “This is my brick.” And the other says, “Well, brother, if it is your brick, take it.”
Two desert fathers story retold by Thomas Merton (1915-1968) and recorded in Why We Live in Community by Eberhard Arnold (Robertsbridge, UK: Plough, 1995) 65-66.