Saturday, September 6, 2008

Going Upstream

The priest at church related an interesting parable story:

A man standing by a river noticed a man drowning, jumped in, rescued him, and brought him back to shore. Minutes later, again he saw a man coming downstream, drowning. He jumped in and rescued him too. After a third time, the man stood by the shore with the three that he had rescued. They saw another man coming downstream and called out, "why don't you save him!?" The man replied, "you do the same. I'm going upstream to find out why people keep falling in the river!"

The message is clear, but acknowledging that the message is clear is also acknowledging that there is a difficult, practical mission that we as people need to carry out in how we address the problems we see in the world. I wish I could say I know just what to do and have the courage to carry it out, but I don't. But I'm working on it.

Also, someone stood up in church and asked the priest in church, "What should we do come November", and he replied:

"You had better inform your conscience. The church says that you have an obligation to inform your conscience and vote as each of you truly believes is right."

Thank you, Fr. Barry.

2 comments:

Eileen said...

Thanks for sharing this, Edwin. I like stories, and this is a good one. Have you read "Following Christ in a Consumer Society" by Kavanaugh? I just started devouring it, and I think you would really like it, esp the 2006 edition.

Anonymous said...

That was indeed a wonderful response.