Coco Calling No.239 - A Mirror to the Soul
- Coco
- May 10, 2023
- 3 min read
I recently came across a quote from Billy Graham which made me chuckle. (Well, actually I can’t chuckle, but I can do a good snigger or a cackle instead). Billy Graham said this:
“A real Christian is someone who can lend his pet parrot to the village gossip for a week.” (Billy Graham: [1918-2018]: Prominent American evangelist)
And that’s so very true. Because we parrots simply can’t keep a secret. If we hear something, we have to repeat it, irrespective of whether it is good or bad. And so you could say that we’re rather like a mirror to our owners’ souls.
Many years ago, my owner met a 103-year-old Macaw which had purportedly belonged to Winston Churchill. And sure enough, it came out with a whole string of swear words, and muttered all kinds of bad things about the Germans.
Now of course, none of us are perfect. We’ve all got certain things about us that we would rather keep hidden from public view. In the Springtime, when my hormones are flowing, I’ve been known to become a bit nippy. And while my owner doesn’t normally use rude words or make effigies of people that annoy him, he’s still very aware of his inner faults. And that can create an inner tension, because once we become a practicing Christian, the rest of the world places us on a pedestal and expects us to become a model of good behaviour. Expectations of us soar rather like a parrot on the wing...

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