Feed the Birds

Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time: Mark 9:41-50

Feast of St. Polycarp

“Jesus said to his disciples: “Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.” Mark 9:41

I admit it.

I have been on a Mary Poppins kick since I discovered that quote with which I opened my last post. Even though I saw many Disney movies as a child, I had never seen Mary Poppins. As a child, my special interests were so focused that, unless a movie appeared to offer me at least one of them, I wasn’t interested. Doctor Doolittle passed muster for me then – the Rex Harrison film – with all those animals he talked to. Apparently, Mary Poppins didn’t pass (in spite of the penguins, horses, fox and hounds, and dog).

Well, I watched the whole of Mary Poppins for the first time this past week. Maybe it was better for me to have waited until now. I can appreciate it more now than I did then. There is the transformation of Mr. Banks, which is not unlike my own journey. (Julie Andrews characters seem to have that effect on people. Witness Baron von Trapp in the movie The Sound of Music, which came out a year after Mary Poppins.)

There were a number of delightful scenes in Mary Poppins, of course. The most powerful, for me, is the scene that leads into, and includes, the song Feed The Birds. Mary tells the children that they must get to sleep, as their father is taking them with him to the bank where he works tomorrow. The children are amazed, as Mr. Banks had never done anything like this before, and say how much they look forward to all the things he will show them in “the City”. Mary tells them, “Well, most things, he can. Sometimes a person we love, through no fault of his own, can’t see past the end of his nose.” Then she begins to sing a song of the bird woman, an old lady who sells bags of crumbs to anyone who passes by, encouraging them to feed the birds (and support her at the same time). The bird woman is someone who Mr. Banks is likely to miss or ignore as not worth his time. But she shouldn’t be ignored. She has something important to say:

Early each day to the steps of Saint Paul’s
The little old bird woman comes
In her own special way to the people she calls
Come, buy my bags full of crumbs

Come feed the little birds, show them you care
And you’ll be glad if you do
Their young ones are hungry
Their nests are so bare
All it takes is tuppence from you

Feed the birds, tuppence a bag,
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag
“Feed the birds,” that’s what she cries
While overhead, her birds fill the skies

All around the cathedral the saints and apostles
Look down as she sells her wares.
Although you can’t see it, you know they are smiling
Each time someone shows that he cares

Though her words are simple and few
Listen, listen, she’s calling to you
“Feed the birds, tuppence a bag
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag”

The bird woman is someone who is easily ignored by the “important” people. Yet Mary Poppins notices, and wants the children to notice. Here is someone who gives what she can, risking the ridicule of the crowd, and invites others to help her do so. A double way to “pay it forward”: help the bird woman, and feed the birds. The scene is powerful. You can see it here.

So, too, it is easy for us to ignore people like the bird woman, or ridicule them, or find lots of reasons why helping them is a waste (as Mr. Banks says at first). We say that they are milking the system, or our compassion. We say that they will spend what we give them on alcohol or other drugs or cigarettes or something else besides food. We find ways to let ourselves off the hook.

Let’s be honest. It doesn’t work. If it did, why would we be so reluctant to let our eyes meet theirs? Why would we be so quick to find the worst possible motives for their behavior? Besides, we know well that Jesus doesn’t let us off the hook so easily. He never makes the worthiness of the person the criteria for our generosity. In fact, he tells us that our heavenly Father makes his sun shine on the bad as well as the good, and makes rain fall on the just and the unjust alike. We are to imitate the absurd, uncalculating mercy of our Father.

Moreover, when Jesus points out to his disciples that the widow in the temple who put in two small coins (tuppence, we might say) in the temple treasury has put in more than those who gave a huge amount (and with much fanfare, to boot). The bird woman is giving all she has, and inviting the rest of us to just give a small amount to help her and the birds. She is a manifestation of Christ, breaking into our busy lives and calling on us to notice what truly matters. What we do to the last of our brothers and sisters, we do to Christ.

We can say more. The bird woman wants us to help feed the birds. Our compassion extends not only to our fellow human beings (like the bird woman). It also extends to birds and to the whole natural world. Care for the environment has been a part of Catholic teaching for decades now. We do so because the Lord Jesus took on our flesh. In so doing, he took on the natural world to himself and made it a means of his presence. He sanctified it, and also promised (read Romans 8) that the whole of creation will share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. What we do to the natural world, we do to Christ.

Christ has promised us that anyone who gives so much as a cup of cold water to any of his sisters and brothers will have a reward. As Matthew 25 reminds us, the reverse is also true. Those who fail to see Christ in others, and treat them accordingly, will find that things will not go well for them. Is it too much to say that those who fail to treat all of creation with reverence and respect will also be treated accordingly? The logic of the words of Christ and Church teaching would seem to say yes.

So, help the bird woman in your midst. Feed the birds, too, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, who also feeds the birds and clothes the fields with flowers. You will find that your reward will not appear on some accountant’s ledger, but may be worth far more than anything that can be counted.

It seems that Walt Disney himself loved the song “Feed The Birds”, and often requested that the songwriters play it for him. When they did, he would say that the song sums up everything that Mary Poppins is about, and everything that Walt Disney Studios is about. Interesting to ponder that. It gives some insight into Walt Disney’s values.

One final comment. I mentioned Doctor Doolittle earlier. The good Doctor, at least as Rex Harrison portrays him, is likely on the autism spectrum. He has most of the indicators. That’s probably why I liked him, even if I found the movie a bit too long when I was a child! And he’s not the only one. We can turn up in the least likely of places.