"Then we were ashamed, and you said, 'Bishop, we should have trusted you. Keep the car.' And I also said to him, 'Bishop, keep the car, and forgive us for meddling.'

"He smiled at us, and said, 'Let me tell you what you don't know. That rich old man also came to me as you did, and gave me all his surplus to use as the Lord saw fit. He told me that he had even sold his cars, because, being retired, he could take the bus or walk to do everything he needed to do. But I said, "No you can't. You need a car because I need you to bring four elderly widows to church every Sunday." And he said, "What can I do? I've already sold my cars." That was when I gave him the title to your old car. He's using it in the service of the Lord.'

"And then we realized that the bishop had fulfilled his stewardship, and we apologized for mistrusting him. And he said, 'Your problem wasn't that you didn't trust me. Your problem was that you still thought of the car as yours.'

"But I said, 'No, Bishop. Our problem was that our car still owned us. It still had the power to turn us away from good works. It isn't enough to give our surplus to the bishop. We have to change our hearts so that we no longer covet the things we own. Even what we still have belongs to the Lord. We're stewards; we have no property of our own.'"

Her husband shouted aloud when he heard the end of her dream. "Now I understand the parable of the talents. Now I know the real sin of the unrighteous servant, the one who buried the one talent in the ground. He was treating the money as if it belonged to him, withholding it from anyone else, so that it couldn't be used for anything. But the other servants, knowing that the money didn't belong to them, put it out with moneylenders so that it could be used to build things, to make things. Everyone profited—the servants who shared freely, the moneylenders, and the people who borrowed and then repaid. But the one who clung to his money and let no one else use it—no one benefited, not even him. And his constant fear of losing that money became a burden to him. It was his soul he buried in the ground, his freedom."

Then both the husband and wife knew that their dreams were wise ones. And from that day forward they ceased to own any thing or to be owned by any thing. Many things were still recorded as their property, after the manner of the world, but whatever they had, they shared freely with any who needed it. Thus they had no fear of being robbed, for they owned nothing. They no longer cared about impressing their wealthy and educated friends, and soon they learned which of their old friends were true, and which of them were false, because the true friends rejoiced with them in their new freedom, while the false friends mocked and despised them.

And then something happened that surprised them most of all. Because they no longer cared about the world's measurement of a person's worth, they began to see other members of the Church in a new light. They began to see past clothing or manners or grammar or education and made new friends among the very people they had once looked down on. They learned that there was far more wisdom and goodness among the humble people of the Church than they had ever found among the wealthy and sophisticated. They had once ridiculed these people because they had "bad taste"; now they understood that "good taste" was completely unrelated to goodness of heart.