Beware Old Dry Wells

The story goes that a holy man, in the dark of night while he was contemplating the stars, happened to bump into a dry well. Out of its depths a voice, crying out for help, came out. “I am a grammar teacher and while on my way to the university I fell into the well.” The holy man said, “Hold on friend. I fetch a ladder and and will git you outta there.” But the victim in the well replied, “One moment there! Your grammar and diction are terribly faulty. What you should have said is...” The holy man broke in, “if my grammar is more essential to what is important, you better stay down there until I learn how to speak properly!¨ And, bowing to the well, he continued on his journey.
 
As we go through life many of us get caught up in our confining, dry wells and we lose sight of what is truly essential. In the gospels, Jesus challenges and reminds us over and over to be awake, alert and vigilant against dried-up-well attitudes. Our churches can also get caught up in those wrappings and we can get entangled and mean spirited, forgetting our principle mission of the love we owe to ourselves, our God and one another. At the evening of our lives, we will be judged by the love we have practiced.
 
Let us not forget to cultivate a spirit of gratitude that opens us to the mercy, freely gifted, by our God. Let us drink and drown only in the wells of God's mercy.
 
Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz