Eileen Nearne

New parables emerge every day! It's amazing what you discover in the short biographies posted as obituaries. From The Week (www.theweek.com a weekly news-summary magazine), there's a listing on Eileen Nearne. She died at 89, a recluse. Local officials thought they would have to use a "pauper's grave" burial, but when they searched her apartment, they found an extraordinary trove of WWII memoriabilia.

March, 1944, she parachuted into France with a short-wave radio transmitter, and organized weapons drops to the French resistance. Caught, tortured by the Gestapo, she escaped and hid until liberation. From 1945 to 2010, she lived with disabilities caused by the torture and stress, becoming more reclusive. (Do a Goggle search on her name - amazing)

A veterans's organization paid for her funeral, attended by 350, including representatives from the British armed forces and the French consul-general.

The "parable" part of this? Under the quiet, reclusive surface of people just around you, inside every one of them, is a story perhaps known only to God and to ones who care enough to get close enough to discover it. (Related "quiet" stories among my neighbors: a D-Day paratrooper and a transport pilot for that day, and a B-17 pilot.)

Go back and read Luke's Gospel; Jesus continually gets close to people that others avoid, and discovers amazing qualities there.

The "moral of the story"? Do what He said, love your neighbor enough to really get to know your neighbor, and suddenly your own life is enriched beyond all your expectations.