IS A PARABLE LIKE A PARABOLA IN ANY WAY?

Blog number 444 ******** 06 December 2010

I have this recurring dream. I have it every day.

I am in this strange village. The inhabitants of this village love cats and birds. The number of cats is shocking because they have kind of taken over the village. The birds, however are very scarce. This is because they keep disappearing. A bird is there one day. The next day it's gone.

The problem is so intense that the villagers even have a factory that breeds birds which they then turn loose. It's the only way they could have any birds. And they just love birds. Just as much as they love cats.

I tell them that the cats are eating the birds. I tell them that I see them do it. Many times every day. But they don't believe me. They say that cats don't eat birds. In fact, they tell me that cats don't eat anything except maybe a bowl of milk every once in awhile.

I tell them that if they watched a cat and a bird for just a few moments, they would see this phenomenon too. But they think the idea is so insane that it would be foolishness to waste valuable time like that. Time that could be better spent raising birds.

I tell them that the evidence is obvious, the evidence is overwhelming, the evidence is easily observable that the cats are eating the birds. But nobody believes me.

There is the fact that the birds are disappearing while the cat's numbers are multiplying and the cats are fat dumb and happy while the birds are all terrified.

There is the fact that bits of birds lie on the sidewalks, on lawns and on porches. Feathers are everywhere. Tons of feather deposited over many years. But the people dismiss all this evidence as of no consequence. Cats don't eat birds, end of story.

Of course their scientists study the matter of the scarcity of birds ad minimum, but like scientists everywhere, they only study what they have been taught. And they have been taught that cats don't eat birds. But the scientists HAVE come up with a theory, which they call "The Theory of Disappearance." They believe that this theory explains why the birds disappear, so they believe the problem is solved. But it's not. The bird factory still has to turn out many birds a day in order for the villagers to have any at all.

Then I wake up. But I know I will have the same dream again tomorrow.

Maybe it will have a different outcome? Hah!

Dream on.