Celebrate

A young Monk gets assigned to a monastery whose sole purpose is the production of Bibles. This is before the advent of the printing press, so the production process consists of 20 or so Monks hand copying from copies of the original. After a while, this new Monk notices that his copy differs from his neighbor’s copy, which differs from other copies, and so on and so forth. He raises this concern to the Abbott, who, after thinking about it carefully, decides to take his personal copy, which all other copies are based on, down to the vault to compare it against the original. After about two hours, the Monk becomes concerned that the Abbott has not yet resurfaced from the vault. He goes down to the basement and finds the Abbott in the vault banging his head on the table, with both Bibles open before him. The Monk asks, “What are you doing? What is wrong?” The Abbott replies, in a somber tone with a tinge of lifelong regret:

“The word was celebrate.” 

:-|

-- Taken from a Tara Brack talk years ago. She did not name the original author, so neither can I