THE MAN & THE BIRD - A CHRISTMAS PARABLE

Now the man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he
was a kind, decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright
in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that
incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It
just didn't make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He
just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a
man.

"I'm truly sorry to upset you," he told his wife, "but I'm not
going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like
a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he
would wait up for them. And so he stayed and they went to the
midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall.
He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and
heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read
his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound.
Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud. At first
he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room
window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a
flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in
the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly
through his large landscape window.

Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he
remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would
provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly
he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the
barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds
did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried
back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow,
making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable.
But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued
to flap around helplessly in the snow.

He tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by
walking around them waving his arms. Instead, the scattered in every
direction, except into the warm, lighted barn. And then, he realized,
that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange
and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let
them know that they can trust me. That I am not trying to hurt them,
but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to
frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would
not be led or shooed because they feared him.

"If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with
them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be
afraid. Then I could show them the way to safe, warm . . . to the
safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see,
and hear and understand."

At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his
ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to
the bells - listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas.
Suddenly, he understood as he sank to his knees in the snow,
asking God for forgiveness.