I was doing some reading this morning and came across the below story that I feel, in many ways, highlights to some degree, Benedictine Spirituality and thought fitting today, The Feast of St. Benedict:
When I waited for a friend outside Penn Station, New York. The place was busy, as you’d expect, with hundreds of people walking and talking. In the middle of Penn Plaza, I noticed pigeons pulling at a large piece of bread someone had dropped. Their work was continually interrupted by the passers-by and the pigeons flew to and from their find but were having very little success in taking any advantage of it. I watched, maybe without even knowing I was watching, and then I noticed a man walking towards me. I would put him in his late twenties and a bit alternative perhaps! Black T-shirt, tattooed forehead, faded and torn jeans, a dangling earring and still a man who could blend into and get lost in the crowd. He walked through the pigeons and they scattered. Then it happened! He stopped and, as I watched, I saw him go back to the bread, go down on his knees and take the piece of bread in his hand and begin to break it into pieces. He rubbed the broken pieces on the ground and they became almost dust-like. As I watched, I thought his movements awkward and labored but admired what he was doing. He got up, walked away and the birds flew back to the broken and scattered pieces. No longer were they congregated around one piece, now there was feeding to be done. As he walked past me, I heard myself say ‘Well done!’ I don’t know where it came from and neither did he. He stopped, and looked at me and asked ‘What do you mean, “well done”?’ ‘That’s a good thing you just did’, I said. He smiled a little, looked at me and said, ‘If I didn’t do that, only the greedy ones would get it’. I was silent but filled with admiration and then I noticed, one of the arms of his T-shirt hung empty, he had one arm. I thought again about the awkwardness of his work and realized that, with one arm, he had done what I failed to do – notice, react, respond and make a difference.
Send Comments: boniface@oblate.info