Tuesday, May 20, 2014

The Importance of Stuff or Not

I hope you have noticed I haven't posted in a while. I have been hard at work on writing and editing our family history. It is a big project. This is a little jewell I found stuck amonst my papers.


Father Dick Rice works with a group of eight priests in community service.  It is his everyday work.  They would occasionally get the proverbial question, “What’s your Fax number”.  The group had decided that they were the only people in St. Paul without a FAX machine and they should get one.  They had pretty much made up their mind when one ask, “How many times would we use it?”  They decided that it would probably be necessary only about three times a week.  It now seemed silly to spend the money on a fax machine for that amount of usage.  They inquired who in the church area might have a fax machine.  They discovered that the church office six blocks down the street had one.  It was managed by a person that worked for the church they didn’t know.  They worked out a deal to use their fax machine.  For the three times a week they might need a fax machine they would use that one.  In the mean time they made a new friend in the other office.  Not accumulating more “stuff”, saved money and found a new friend.

That week he had listened to the poems of that new found 82 year old friend.  She ask him if he would listen to her poems because she had no one else to listen to them.  And he spent the time and listened to this little old lonely lady.

Time rushs by too fast. Slow down and listen every once in a while. Poems are not stuff.  The Bible is not stuff. We are not stuff.

Sam



1 comment:

Thomas said...

Indeed. Too many times we use social media or email rather than good old personal interaction to get something done. I still like meeting people face to face and finding out who they are. Fortunately, most are OK with that if I make the first move.