01/02/2018

Good morning,
Almost all my life I’ve been lucky enough to live in a home with a garden. What I like most in the morning is to go outside and feed the birds; sunflower hearts for the finches, raisins for the blackbirds, peanuts for the woodpeckers and jays. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds tells us that for many species gardens are now essential habitats.

To me, birds represent freedom, the expanse of free flight. I once visited the stone prison cells of the so-called ‘Little’ Fortress in Theresienstadt, where the Nazis tortured their political prisoners, even before they made the town into a ghetto for Jews. There, above the door to the mercifully long-abandoned chambers, was a swallow feeding its chicks in its nest. I was moved by the contrast: the bird of liberty raising its young in this once notorious prison, flying to and fro at will. In Hebrew, the word for ‘swallow’ means freedom.

‘Freedom’, said the young refugee from Iran who’s been living with us for the last four months, ‘is everything’. He’s mercifully just been granted leave to remain in the UK and can now build his future with hope.

‘I want everyone in the world to be free from war and persecution,’ he said. ‘I want everyone to have a future’.

Now I often think of his words when I put out the food for the birds in the morning. Like humans, birds face many hazards: hunger, sickness, snares and climate change. I pray for both our species:

God, bless all creatures, avian and human, with liberty, safety and hope.