The Parable of the White Birds and Black Birds
Tierno Bokar was a Sufi wise man who lived in Mali, in West Africa, early last century. He liked teaching with stories.
In his Parable of the White Birds and Black Birds, he taught that a good thought is always better than a bad one, even when thinking about your enemies. And the best thing you can do is to pray for your enemies.
‘Why?’ asked one student. ‘Don’t we look stupid praying for our enemies?’
‘Only in the eyes of those who don’t understand,’ Tierno replied. ‘We wrong ourselves more by speaking ill of our enemies than by blessing them.’
He then told the story of the White Birds and Black Birds.
People are like walls facing each other, he said. Like a dovecote, each wall is full of holes where white birds and black birds nest. The black birds are bad thoughts and bad words. The white birds are good thoughts and good words.
Because of their different sizes, the white birds can only nest in white-bird holes. The black birds can only enter their own black-bird holes.
Now, imagine that two men, Yousef and Ali, are enemies. One day, Yousef thinks Ali is wishing him evil. Yousef gets angry about it and sends Ali a nasty thought.
How does he send that nasty thought? By releasing a black bird from its nesting hole in his wall. That black bird flies towards Ali, carrying that bad thought along with it. That bird then looks for an empty hole in Ali’s wall where it can leave it.
But if Ali hasn’t had any bad thoughts, he won’t have any empty holes. All his black birds will still be at home resting. And when Yousef’s bird finds nowhere to stop, it will have to return home to its own nest, taking the evil thought back with it.
That evil thought will then start festering in Yousef’s own wall, slowly eroding and destroying it. Why? It’s because evil is like acid – it always eats away at whatever it touches.
But if Ali had had a bad thought, he would then have an empty hole where Yousef’s bird could leave his evil thought. That evil would then start eroding Ali’s wall.
In the meantime, Ali’s black bird would have flown towards Yousef and the empty hole left in his wall.
The two black birds would then have achieved their goal: each depositing something nasty in the opposite wall. But again, evil is like acid, so each wall would slowly start to disintegrate.
Once their job is done, the birds always return to their original nest because, it is said, ‘Everything returns to its source.’
But the evil is not exhausted – there’s always some left – so each black bird takes some back to its own nest. That evil then turns against their authors and gradually eats away at them, too.
The author of a nasty thought, a bad wish or an ill-spoken word is therefore attacked by both the enemy’s black bird and his own when it returns to him.
Now, it’s the same with the white birds.
If we only ever think good thoughts about our enemy, while the enemy only thinks bad thoughts about us, the enemy’s black birds won’t find anywhere to stop in our wall and will return to its sender.
And the white birds we send carrying good thoughts – if our enemy has nowhere to receive them, they will simply return to us, charged with all the positive energy they’re carrying.
Thus – and this is the point – if we only ever emit good thoughts, no evil, no ill-spoken words can ever touch us, because we’re not open to them.
That’s why we should always pray for blessings for both our friends and our enemies. Not only might the good thought reach its destination, but it also always comes back to us carrying its positive energy (Mk.4:20). [i]
Why do I share this story with you? It’s because in Mark’s Gospel today, Jesus says that whoever thinks, says or does something nice for someone else – even as little as offering them a glass of water – will be rewarded.
That’s because the good you do always comes back to you.
But whoever does the opposite, whoever does something nasty towards someone else – even if it’s only a bad thought – will suffer for it.
Why? It’s because evil is like acid. It eats away at whatever it touches.
And everything always returns to its source.
[i] https://www.themathesontrust.org/papers/islam/Teaching%20Stories%20from%20Tierno%20Bokar.pdf