Making things right
I heard something at church once about gossip and I feel it stands true for a lot of things mainly, trying to undo what you have done wrong. I found this similar story online:
The woman asks, ‘Father, is gossip a sin?” The priest responds, 'I want you to go home, take a pillow upon your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me.' So, the woman went home: took a pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to her roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old parish priest as instructed. 'Did you gut the pillow with a knife?' he says. 'Yes, Father.' 'And what were the results?' 'Feathers,' she said. 'Feathers?' he repeated. 'Feathers; everywhere, Father.' 'Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out onto the wind,' 'Well,' she said, 'it can't be done. I don't know where they went. The wind took them all over.' 'And that,' said Father O' Rourke, 'is gossip!'
The difference between the way the priest and the woman talk about gossip and how I truly feel about our faults and errors is that the woman says she can’t; I don’t believe this. I can’t and and I don’t know are lazy responses, they are apathetic. I believe she can. The woman realizing what she did could then decide whether or not it is worth it to her to go back and find every feather lost. It may take her years it may take her a life time… but ultimately, if she feels the pillow is worth fixing then she will do this. If she spends the rest of her life trying then she was at least able to prove that she knew what she did was wrong and that action of setting out to find each and every last feather will prove just how much righting the situation meant to her. If she died trying then, in this lifetime “can’t” never existed. She was actively looking until her last breather which meant she died not knowing she didn’t. The most important fact being that the error was important enough to her to never stop working twds fixing it. Does this make sense?
Now of course whether or not the owner of the pillow ever felt their pillow was re-filled enough and acceptable is another idea all together. He or she can always say that all is forgiven after seeing the woman’s efforts and believing her.