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Lead Stories: Sunday, September 7, 2008

Feathers Falling From the Rooftops

Posted March 31st, 2008 at 10:30 AM by Jimmie R. Markham

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, SoundOFF, Columns

There is a scene in John Patrick Shanley’s Tony-Award winning play Doubt: A Parable in which Father Flynn is giving a sermon. During the sermon, he describes a woman who is racked with guilt after having gossiped about a man she hardly knew. Father Flynn describes in this parable how the woman goes to confession and asks for forgiveness. Instead of giving her absolution, the priest says:

“Not so fast!… I want you to go home, take a pillow up on your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me!” So she went home, took the pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to the roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old priest as instructed. “Did you gut the pillow with the knife?” he says. “Yes, Father.” “And what was the result?” “Feathers,” she said. “Feathers”? he repeated. “Feathers everywhere, Father!” “Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out on the wind!” “Well,” she says, “it can’t be done. I don’t know where they went. The wind took them all over.” “And that,” said Father O’Rourke, “is gossip!”

I read a thread today on the message board at Track & Field News that is full of flying feathers.
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