The Parable of the Quaker Parrots

I saw a strange sight yesterday while walking with my parents--a flock of Quaker parrots in a tree. Quaker parrots are small green parrots and popular pets. My parents used to have one named "Kiwi" who could sing "La Cucaracha" and say his name. He tried to bite Shawna every time she walked by the cage. She hated that bird.

It was a strange sight because Quaker parrots are not native to the US and are almost always pets. My parents told me how it came to be that those Quaker Parrots were in a flock in a tree instead of in cages singing "La Cucaracha" and trying to bite visiting in-laws.

When hurricanes struck Central Florida, many people who could not bring their pets with them set them free in order to give them a chance to survive. Some pet shops were destroyed by the storms and some of the animals got out. There are lots of dogs living wild in the Everglades for the same reason.

These Quaker parrots found each other, flocked together, and began to live as they would have if they had been born in the wild. How strange it must be for them, after spending their whole lives in captivity and being trained to say little phrases and look at themselves in little mirrors and eat seed from a bag, that they would learn what it was like for them to live as God intended, and in a flock with their own kind.

Perhaps that's the way it is for the church. We have grown up with nothing around us besides the world and its ways. We have heard that we were made to be citizens of the Kingdom of God. We have heard about authentic Christian community. But we have very little idea what it might mean to leave the domestication of our culture, both with its cage and with its provision. We have no idea what it might mean to fly as God intended us to fly. We certainly have little idea what it might mean to band together with others who have been set free and depend on each other for survival in the open.

Maybe it takes a hurricane.