Clearly, I have too much time on my hands. A former colleague from CBS posted this on his Facebook page: <\/p>\n
A band of friars lived up on top of a secluded mountain. They had hardly any money, so one day a small group got together, cut some lovely flowers out of the gardens, made them into bundles and went to the local marketplace, where to their happy surprise, they made fifty dollars!<\/p>\n
They started selling flowers once a week and soon were making so much money, they hiked into town every day. In no time, they accumulated over $1,000 from their labors. But then the head friar got word of their business and was furious. He lectured the friars about the evils of money and forbid them from selling more flowers. But the group of rebellious monks refused to stop their lucrative trade and continued to clip the buds they nurtured and sell them in town.<\/p>\n
Finally, the head friar had to hire a guard named Hugh to watch over the naughty friars and make sure they stopped this practice and after two years, the head friar let him go, figuring the flower-selling problem was over. After he was released, however, the friars started cutting the flowers again (and there were a lot of them by now), going into town and selling them as they had before.<\/p>\n
Then, the head friar’s assistant told his master that the flower selling had begun anew, and suggested they should hire Hugh again.<\/p>\n
“You’re right,\u201d the head friar nodded solemnly, \u201cOnly Hugh can prevent florist friars.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Sorry about that. I couldn’t resist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Clearly, I have too much time on my hands. A former colleague from CBS posted this on his Facebook page: A band of friars lived up on top of a secluded mountain. They had hardly any money, so one day a small group got together, cut some lovely flowers out of the gardens, made them…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-and-that"],"yoast_head":"\n
A thorny problem - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/a-thorny-problem.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A thorny problem - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Clearly, I have too much time on my hands. A former colleague from CBS posted this on his Facebook page: A band of friars lived up on top of a secluded mountain. 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