MaBird

MaBird left her four baby birds in the nest as she searched for food very early in the morning.  She looked for worms in the meadows, in the bushes and in the trees.  Four worms or insects would just be fine; instead, she was lucky, having caught six worms.  She ate one for herself as she needed to energize herself for the day.  Nearing the nest, she could hear the young ones crying out for food.

 When she landed, the birdies had wide-opened bills. She fed one worm each.  When they had consumed their share, they started to ask for the last one with MaBird.  It was not much of a problem for MaBird; she had divided the one worm into five pieces.

Fr Alfonso Dujali of St Joseph Catholic Church, Helensville, in one of his homilies shared his experience in Papua New Zealand when he was assigned in a remote island.  To spice up the calendar of activities, he proposed the holding of sports competition during a meeting among the locales. He said that the champion would get the highest cash prize, while the second and third placers get lower amounts of cash prizes. What happened next surprised him.

The participants in the meeting would not agree to the proposal on the prizes. He then asked why. The response was: the prizes should be equally divided. He then realized that the tradition of the people of the island was that whatever was brought to the community, everyone had an equal share.

In today’s world of materialism and competition, people tend to obtain more than they need and win at all cost. While these may have contributed to economic progress and innovations on one side, the downside is the increase in the gap between the haves and have-nots. I remember some time ago that farmers in a European country decided to dump their produce into the sea rather than give these away to people in the verge of starvation in Africa.

Humanity must unlearn some of practices of modern societies, and return to those that created communities where there was peace, harmony and equality. “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.”  (Acts 4:32)