Thought for the Week

IN Caged Bird, poet Maya Angelou describes a bird with clipped wings.

Its feet have been tied, and it has been placed in a cage that prevents it from flying away.

Despite its fear, the caged bird continues to sing of freedom. Angelou describes the joy that a free bird takes in soaring through the sky.

While this book is about the pain of racial discrimination and the disabling impact it has on people, the title made me think recently of the most horrendous situation in Java.

I was horrified to learn that some of the most beautiful birds on our planet are being ‘sold for a song’ in Indonesia.

They are being trapped and crammed into cages to be sold as musical entertainment.

There are more than 140 threatened species, and the sad irony of their slide towards oblivion is that they are trapped in the wild to supply markets because there is a national obsession with pet songbirds.

Owning a caged bird can be a high-value ticket to prizes worth tens of thousands of US dollars, which is the top prize for national bird-singing competitions.

So as forests rapidly fall silent, almost any species can be found crammed into bird markets in the bustling capital Jakarta, and across the country.

Evidently up to 20,000 birds are for sale in a single day in three of Jakarta’s bird markets.

Jesus said of the humble sparrow, that God knows and grieves when one falls. What on earth must God make of this obscenity and abuse of his creation?

Surely this must be stopped and the songs of freedom echo again from the forests as God meant them to be, and not from the cruelty of cages.