town pigeons

I have just had lunch sitting in a town square, and pecking around on the ground there were many pigeons. I have got nothing against pigeons – I find them quite attractive in many ways – but these pigeons, desperate for the crumbs of bread that were falling from my bread roll, they seemed like beggars to me. They had moved out of their natural world and become accustomed to human beings. They had become scavengers. It reminded me of Richard Bach’s lovely short story, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, where the flock of seagulls were the same, fighting over scraps: so were these pigeons. And it reminded me of how easily we humans too become beggars, with this attitude of scavenging, desperate for whatever crumbs are thrown our way. We make ourselves small this way, we become beggarly in everything. Desperate for a job; desperate for a relationship; desperate for love.

We need to move back from this way of living. We need to stop being town pigeons and return to the wild, become more natural and find our essence. When we feel ourself to be whole again we will not beg for anything, even if we have nothing. We will walk as an emperor walks, for everything we need is within us. When we are living our life from that space we cannot beg for anything. We cannot be that small. We do not fight over crumbs, no. We can stand alone. There’s nothing worth fighting for in that way. So let us stop being beggars. Let us feel our own majesty, and then we will see that majesty in everyone and in everything, even the pigeons.