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Three Cents Column by Director Bong
Three Cents Column by Director Bong of RGO 24! 'Although I am lacking and my writing is only worth as much as 'three cents...' I share the Sunday messages and interpret them with 'the language of the world.''
A frog dies because it forgets.
Grenouille is French for ‘frog’, and there are several dishes that contain grenouille. One of them is ‘boiled frog.’
The way they cook this [dish] is they place a pot and a portable gas burner on a table in front of the customers, put the live frogs in the pot, and boil them while the customers are watching. When the frogs are first put in the pot, they writhe, trying to get out. However, once water at the optimal temperature that a frog prefers is poured into the pot, they become so accustomed to the warm water that they do not even attempt to escape anymore, even if the lid is left off. After that, as the water is very slowly heated, the frogs gradually die in the pot while sleeping comfortably, unaware that they are being cooked.
Maybe this is why Vision Loss Syndrome is also called “boiling frog syndrome.” The frog dies only because it is blinded by the warm touch of the water that comes in contact with its body (physical reality, sensory pleasure), forgetting its vision for ‘life (spiritual hope, spiritual salvation).’ It is a syndrome that we must be careful to avoid by thinking ‘if you forget, you will die.’
Swiss mercenaries became heroes because they did not forget.
Louis ⅩⅥ of France and Marie Antoinette were king and queen at the climax of the conflict between the nobility and the commoners . At that time, the minority of nobles and priests possessed 45% of France’s wealth, and tax was collected only from the commoners. They had to shoulder the cost of the countless wars instigated by France. It was the cost of employing external armed forces. Ultimately, the French citizens could no longer bear it, and so they began the famous ‘French Revolution’ and drove the nobility from their positions and imprisoned King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
However, do you know that the ones who guarded the palace until the end were not the French soldiers but the Swiss mercenaries? Originally, when the French National Guard besieged the palace, they offered the Swiss mercenaries a chance to live saying, “This is not your war. The tide has already turned, so go back to your country.” However, in order to protect the life of the one to whom the Swiss mercenaries were contracted, they rejected the offer, and in the end, more than 700 Swiss mercenaries were killed.
There was a letter that one of the mercenaries, who was killed in action at that time, was going to send to his family. In it, he wrote the following:
‘If we lose credibility, our descendants will not be hired as mercenaries. That is why we decided to keep the contract without forgetting it until we die.’
Switzerland is a small country located in the Alps. Since most of the country is mountainous, the land is difficult to farm. Therefore, they have always suffered from poverty. They did not have many options for income generation, but one of these few ways was the ‘dispatchment of mercenaries.’
It is no coincidence that even today it is Swiss mercenaries who guard the Vatican, which is one of the holiest places in the world. In addition, the money that these young mercenaries earn with their life on the line and send back to their country is the ‘price of the blood of their brothers,’ which the Swiss Bank also has to protect with its life on the line. This tradition was the starting point of today’s Swiss Bank, and it made [the Swiss Bank] known for the ‘security’ it provides for customers’ possessions and for its ‘credibility.’
The Swiss mercenaries who ‘knew how to not forget but keep their promises’ succeeded in establishing a modern-day first-class country. We should think deeply about what we should not forget and about what we should guard without forgetting in order to not die but live eternally.
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- 1/19/2015
