FW: 42 - MORE WORDS

[Guest guest]

> Mark Twain put it very nicely when he said, " It was so cold that if the

> thermometer had been an inch longer, we would have frozen to death. " We do

> freeze to death on words. It's not the cold outside that matters, but the

> thermometer. It's not reality that matters, but what you're saying to

> yourself about it. I was told a lovely story about a farmer in

> Finland. When they were drawing up the Russian-Finnish border, the farmer

> had to decide whether he wanted to be in Russia or Finland. After a long

> time he said he wanted to be in Finland, but he didn't want to offend the

> Russian officials.. These came to him and wanted to know why he wanted to

> be in Finland. The farmer replied, " It has always been my desire to live

> in Mother Russia, but at my age I wouldn't be able to survive another

> Russian winter. "

>

> Russia and Finland are only words, concepts, but not for human beings, not

> for crazy human beings. We're almost never looking at reality. A guru was

> once attempting to explain to a crowd how human beings react to words, feed

> on words, live on words, rather than on reality. One of the men stood up

> and protested; he said, " I don't agree that words have all that much effect

> on us. " The guru said, " Sit down, you son of a bitch. " The man went livid

> with rage and said, " You call yourself an enlightened person, a guru, a

> master, but you ought to be ashamed of yourself. " The guru then said,

> " Pardon me, sir, I was carried away. I really beg your pardon; that was a

> lapse; I'm sorry. " The man finally calmed down. Then the guru said, " It

> took just a few words to get a whole tempest going within you; and it took

> just a few words to calm you down, didn't it? " Words, words, words, words,

> how imprisoning they are if they're not used properly.

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> Anthony de Mello, SJ

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