parables use people to teach about virtue
and vice because we are so good at both
Introduction
Once there was a town—you probably know it. Small, but not too. The people thought they knew one another, but nobody really knows another. It takes a lifetime or longer to know ourselves.
Even so, one woman could see the familiar. She told her parents: in each of us is a little of all of us. They said: that’s nice dear. She told her teachers, the neighbours, the police. It was nice. She was dear. And the truth was too near to see.
With that she began telling tales, shining a light on the obvious. Touching others, touching in return. Some people thought she was crazy. They listened to her words, but could not see with their lives.
These are some of the tales she told. She spoke in drabble, a hundred words long. She spoke in parables about folks gone wrong. But mostly she said: in each of us is a little of all of us. Which is nice. And dear.
Know Your Self
It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.
Sir Edmund Hillary
Know Your Neighbours
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
Charles Dickens
Know What’s Going On
Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.
Alfred Hitchcock
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