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Friday, June 29, 2012

Who are we fooling?

If I may use the term, one of our young adult Ruah Woods "groupies" sent me this song. She said she found it reminiscent of John Paul II's pre-papal play, "The Jeweler's Shop." How true! As I listened to it, I kept thinking of these lines:

 "I thought then about the wedding rings,
which we both, Stefan and I,
wore on our fingers.
One day, on the way back from work,
passing by the jeweler’s shop,
I thought I might as well
sell this ring of mine.
(Stefan probably would not have noticed –
I had almost ceased to exist for him .
Whether he was unfaithful to me I do not know,
since I took no interest in his life either.
He was indifferent to me.
I suppose after office hours he went to play cards,
and after drinking he would come home quite late,
without saying a word, or with some casual remark,
to which as a rule I replied with silence.)
So this time I decided to go in.

The jeweler examined the workmanship, weighed the
            ring
for a long time in his fingers and looked
into my eyes.  For a while he was reading
the date of our wedding
engraved inside the ring.
Again he looked into my eyes, put the ring on the
            scales …
then said, “This ring does not weigh anything,
the needle does not move from zero
and I cannot make it show
even a milligram.
Your husband must be alive –
in which case neither of your rings, taken separately,
will weigh anything – only both together will register.
My jeweler’s scales
have this peculiarity
but man’s entire being and fate .”
Ashamed, I took the ring back
and left the shop without a word
-- I think, though, that he followed me with his eyes.


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