Review: The Song of the Bird by Anthony De Mello

What is the song of the bird? Notes? Melody? Is it merely a call to attract a mate, a means to an end?

The song may be a miracle. A gift from God (whatever your definition may be) that goes unrecognized by the masses. The book Song Of The Bird by Anthony De Mello uses fables and proverbs from a number of religions to set forth a viewpoint of life that transcends the physical world by engulfing it.

Seize the day Live in the moment. Be a part of what surrounds you rather than a casual observer. This is the message opening the book. The notion of God surrounding us only takes a change in our point of view. The see the wonderment that surrounds us and belies our comprehension is to realize the omnipotence that surely exists.

Page six tells the story of The Elephant And The Rat. The moral is "the elephant will sooner fit in the swim trunks of a rat than God will fit into our notions of him." Our idea of God has been transformed from an omnipotent energy source from which everything springs from to that of a man. Call him Jesus Christ, Buddha, or Mohamed; all are incarnations we have projected godliness onto. Rather than heed their teachings and receive them as messengers giving us a guideline to reaching a higher plane of though we quote them as if they are somehow more of a part of this universal energy than we are.

We attempt to put God in a box like our other collections and carry it from house to house thinking we are better for possessing it. In fact we would be better to leave the box behind realizing that we are God. This place is God. No mosque walls, no golden chalice, no image emblazoned on clothe can contain God.

Three animal parables strive to cast light on our error of restricted sight. The first is from the tales of Nasrudin. Nasrudin is an archetypal character of Middle Eastern dissent used by Sufi mystics to direct thoughts away from their typical discriminations. As Nasrudin strolls through the royal garden he happens upon a royal falcon. Being unfamiliar with this type of bird he unwittingly clips it to resemble the pigeon he is accustomed to seeing. Blaming a neglectful keeper Nasrudin dismissed the possibility of natural diversity and changed the misshapen bird to fit his mind's mold.

Monkey Salvation For A Fish relates the tale of a monkey pulling fish from the water and putting them into a tree to save them from drowning. Location, ethnicity, and religion may separate one being from another but all are entitled to their own time and place in their own way. Even though we are not all the same no one is right thereby making all the others wrong. We must all have our own environment where we live the way we are meant to live with our own God.

The third parable is this: "The sun that gives sight to the eagle blinds the owl." We know our world and compare everything we encounter to what we know of that world. We have selective belief, that our way, our world, is the only one that has the right to claim God. The eagle is as much a miracle as the owl. Though they both coexist in the same space and time neither is capable of inhabiting the other's world. They co-exist without compromising the other's way of life. Imagine if humans could do the same instead of the factions seeing themselves as omnipotent on this planet.

Living conscientiously in every moment is being enlightened. It is the definition of whole-iness. This book uses stories as cinematography. It turns spirituality into a fully dimensional object and provides 360° views of it for a fully realized understanding.

No mater what religious flag you claim to fly over your being this book strikes on the anvil that has forged all of them. The core of matter is that it doesn't matter at all.