Toasting the new year with hot water

[Michael Michalko]

I recently participated in a session with a number of politicians of different parties about reform of the political process. After the session, I discussed my disappointment with the results with Father Tom, a Franciscan monk who taught political science at St. Bonaventure University. I told him how I had discussed the issue with many in the group before the session, and I knew they had many ideas, including many unusual and unique. Yet they held back and offered only the same old conservative ideas. Father Tom, laughed, and said the politicians were hoarding their ideas for their own purposes. Politicians are paranoid about original ideas and feel others want to steal them. They attend meetings of this type in order to find out what the others have done or are recommending so they can steal theirs. He then told me a tale about a Franciscan missionary.

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Many years ago in Japan, the missionary decided it would be nice for the village to celebrate the New Year with a big crock of hot sake wine. The missionary asked the ten richest men to each bring one large jug of wine for the huge heating bowl, since none could provide for all. On the way to his wine cellar, each man thought, "My wine is too valuable to share! No one will know. It'll never show. It'll still be fine. I'll bring a jug of water instead of the wine." And so when they gathered with the jugs they brought, all ten old men poured the contents of their jugs ceremoniously into the big bowl and then looked sheepishly at one another as they heated and poured hot water for all.

[Garth]

I wonder what might have happened if the missionary asked all the villagers to bring small jugs of wine?