The Birds

This is a favourite of mine, written in 1987 after seeing birds eating bread I had thrown out. I called it a parable but suspect that fable is a better term for this piece has elements that are, in the original sense of the word, that is as pertaining to fables, fabulous, that is to say magical or pertaining to fantasy.


 THE BIRDS

Stephen Meikle

    Once upon a time there was a man who loved birds, and who delighted in
nothing better than to feed them crumbs and then to sit back, watching them
eat and be satisfied.
    He also wanted to have the birds hop into his hand. How he longed to
play with them and delight in their close presence, caressing them and
feeding them from his own hand! But the man was mighty, of stern and
fearsome visage, or so it seemed to the birds. He was also very big in
height and girth and on seeing this the birds thought he was as fierce as
his looks. His presence so terrified them that they would not approach the
bread until he had departed. But whenever he did leave, the bread, which he
always dropped, suddenly became rotten. It grew mold and began to smell
terribly. Because of this some of the birds despised the man and his gifts
and so went off and starved because there was a famine in the land in which
the birds could only be fed by the charity of man.
    Some other birds, however, persuaded themselves that they needed and
indeed loved moldy bread, such was the fierceness of their hunger pangs
that it warped their little minds. These poor little birds would gorge on
it, telling themselves that it was their own fault if they failed to love
moldy bread and that, besides, moldy bread was an acquired taste. But
then, becoming drugged by the poisons in the mold, they tried to force
other birds to eat this bread even if these others flew away.
    Of those who acquired the taste for moldy bread some would fly far
afield to tell others of this miraculous moldy loaf but they and the
flocks that joined them perished in the fierce winds of distant lands.
Others, including some of the far fliers, would take a crumb in their beaks
and through its narcotic properties gained magical powers. Behold! They
could feed more than five thousand birds from just one bread crumb! Yet the
bread they made to feed all of them, even the leftovers, basketsful, was
still all moldy.
    But the worst and saddest cases of all were those comparatively few
most highly dedicated to the bread who only ate the mold in order to get
the unique properties of this wondrous bread undiluted. These died
instantly, but the mold animated their corpses. They knew this and
rejoiced that they were 'dead in the loaf' and 'risen to a new song' for
indeed their voices were changed. Only the other birds, however, recognized
this song for what is was - the keening of a bird of prey, and most of them
fled the mold eaters, but the mold eaters only laughed, or rather
screeched, saying that theirs was a radical renewal of the state of
birdness, like being re-hatched once more, and that the others weren't true
birds at all, but were still in the shell of ignorance, dependent on the
yolk of compromise. But the mold could only animate their dead bodies,
enabling them to eat and chirp and fly, if for only a short time.

    For the fact remained, alas, that all who ate this moldy bread died
sooner or later, unless they returned to find the man in the hope that he
could cure them. For he can be seen daily feeding the birds in the city
park even to this present time, and any bird who returns there looking for
him and is willing to wait for him is sure to find him. In his love for
birds the man has researched every aspect of the health and wellbeing of
birds, and knows fully how to cure them of the mold poisoning.
    All the bird seeking a cure for the poisoning needs to do is to hop
into his hand

     Herein is wisdom. The man who loved feeding birds is God. The birds
are humanity. Those who confused moldy bread with wholesome and rejected
both are unbelievers. Those who ate it are religious hypocrites. The far
fliers are missionaries of legalism, the miracle workers evangelists of
supernatural presumption, and the mold eaters are those mislead by carnal
zeal without knowledge, fanatic and super spiritually minded. The mold is
any aspect of the gospel, especially God's wrath which is invariably
distorted and exaggerated when the Holy Spirit has departed. But the mold
is not the bread, which is eternal life and the Word of God, the love and
presence of the Father which can only be had direct from his hand; failing
this it becomes the dead letter which kills.

For verily, verily, thus saith the Lord, thus is the giver greater than the
gift. He who has ears let him hear.