There was a woman in a village who maliciously gossiped about another lady and her family in the village. One day she found out that she was wrong about this lady and her family and had a change of heart. She went to the village’s wise man and asked how she could take back all the wrong she had done.
The wise man told her to go home, kill a chicken, pluck the feathers, and put them into a bag. After this she was to go back and see the wise man again, but on her way back she was to scatter all the feathers she had plucked from the chicken. The lady did as she was told.
When she got back to the man, he told her, "Now, go back and pick up all the feathers that you have scattered." The woman was astonished at such a command and said, "By now, the wind has carried the feathers throughout the village and beyond."
The wise man then told her, “And so it is with your careless words. They are like the feathers scattered in the wind. You cannot retrieve them."
With that, the woman had a broken heart because of the words she had spoken. She went her way, determined from that day forward to watch her words.
- Precept Austin