I got quite attached to my little Asus eee laptop while travelling. The size of a paperback book, it did everything I wanted - lots of photo storage, web, email, office suite - everything. Alas, it's advantage is also a disadvantage - it's small enough to steal and that's what happened to it in the post church service chaos of last Sunday.
So I've been a bit grumpy as I've gone through the motions of filing police reports, pawn shop notifications and insurance claims.
Then I came across this story in Anthony de Mello's
The Prayer of the Frog (Anand Press, 1989), p92
The great buddhist saint Nagarjuna moved around naked except for a loin-cloth and, incongruously, a golden begging-bowl gifted to him by the king who was his disciple.One night he was about to lie down to sleep among the ruins of an ancient monastery when he noticed a thief lurking behind one of the columns. "Here, take this," said Nagarjuna, holding out the begging bowl. "that way you won't disturb me once I have fallen asleep."The thief eagerly grabbed the bowl and made off - only to return next morning with the bowl and a request. He said, "When you gave away this bowl so freely last night, you made me feel very poor. Teach me how to acquire the riches that make this kind of light-hearted detachment possible."Don't know that I would have passed my "golden bowl" over so easily, but I recall Jesus saying something very similar about the things we get attached to.
For another take, check out the discussion on
this site on how to deal with thieves! It's a lesson on "how not to market the church" to thieves or anyone else for that matter. Perhaps Nagarjuna can show us all a few things about how to follow our master!