Scattered Feathers - A Life Lesson

My friend Bekki recently posted about gossip. As I read her post, I was reminded of an illustration I heard recently at a Ladies' Conference.

The story (which is actually in a book found here) goes something like this:

"A woman is accused of ruining a reputation through gossip and visits her rabbi to see how she can atone and repair the damage. She tells the rabbi that she wants to "take back her words." The rabbi tells her to go and get his feather pillow and meet him on the top of a mountain. When she arrives with the pillow, the rabbi instructs her to open it and let the feathers go. She does and the feathers fly everywhere. He tells her that gossip spreads like those feathers in the wind.

Worried that she has not learned her lesson, he instructs her to go and collect all the feathers and bring them back to him. She realizes that she can not and that neither can she take back the gossip which ruined someone's reputation."

A poem that is in the book mentioned above says this:

Words, like feathers fly

in the wind, in the wind.

Careless words, tossed about,

cannot again be swallowed up.

Moral of the story? Don't gossip! What you say to one person can never be taken back. And even when they say they will not tell anyone else, very rarely are they able to contain that juicy information and MUST share it with one more friend, who HAS to tell just one person....ad nauseum.
A main Principle of Communication states it in this way: Communication is irreversible.
Once said, always remembered.

Be careful that the unruly member of the body is kept weakened through humble prayer and daily communication with the Lord!