October 8, 2023
Isaiah 5:1-7
Matthew 21:33-46
While they were young, a myna and a saffron finch struck up a friendship. It wasn’t all that unusual, to be sure. Mynas and saffron finches hunt and peck for seeds and bugs and so on side by side quite often. Along the way they chat about this and that, that and this, at least until the flock of mynas gets riled up about something and start an argument among themselves.
This young myna didn’t much care for the myna arguments and even less for the major arguments, so she would hop off to one side with her friend the saffron finch, and the two of them would talk about food, and bugs, and the silly things mynas do, and the silly things saffron finches do, and the completely undecipherable things that humans do.
The myna liked her friend a lot. The saffron finch liked her friend a lot. Even when they weren’t talking about anything terribly important, they loved their time.
One of the mynas in the flock became, if not the leader, one of the more popular mynas among them. He was often loud and boisterous, and he tended to win the arguments. But he also got the mynas together. When a cat came by, he was the one who organized everyone to screech at it and dive at it until it went away. He kept an eye out for ‘io overhead and for mongoose on the prowl. If one of the mynas was missing, he’d search until he found them (which rarely took long; they tended to be behind a bush or under the eaves of a roof).
As time went on, he became more and more the leader of the flock, and all the other birds came to value his time and attention. That included the myna who was friends with the saffron finch. One of the things she’d talk to her friend about was the times when he’d talk to her.
“He’s an important bird,” said the saffron finch, before they went on to talk more about which was the best flavored bug that day.
One day, however, the leader myna hopped over to the myna who was friends with the saffron finch. “Hey,” he said, only with more myna screech to it. “I hear that you’ve got a friend who’s a saffron finch.”
“That’s right,” she said.
“No, that’s not right,” he told her. “Your friends should be mynas, not saffron finches. It’s one thing to put up with them – after all, they’re so small they don’t eat much – but it’s another thing to be friends with them. It’s time you dropped her. Tell her to stay away from you.”
“Why would I do that?” said the myna with a saffron finch for a friend.
“Because it’s what you should do,” said the leader myna, “and if you don’t, we can’t have you in the flock.”
At this moment the saffron finch landed nearby. The leader myna told her, “Say goodbye to your former friend. She’ll have her friends among the mynas now.”
“There’s no goodbye,” said the myna. “You’re my friend as long as you want to be.”
“I told you to drop her!” he said.
“You can say that all you want,” she replied. “I choose my friends, not you.”
“We’ll see what the flock has to say about that,” he said, and called them over. “This sad bird has a friend who’s a saffron finch,” he sneered to them. “Are we going to put up with that in our flock?”
The myna looked at her friends. She didn’t say anything. They looked at her, and they looked at their leader.
Unexpectedly, the saffron finch spoke up. “Don’t you have a friend who’s a spotted dove?” she asked one, who nodded. “And aren’t you friends with a yellow-beaked cardinal, and you with a northern cardinal?” she asked two more. They nodded as well.
“Are you going to let this bird choose your friends?” she asked, and all the mynas shook their heads.
That was the end of one myna’s leadership, and the continuation of a number of friendships, because of one loyal myna, and then many loyal mynas, in that flock.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Story
I write these stories in advance, then tell them with a combination of memory and improvisation on Sunday mornings.
Photos of a myna (l.) and saffron finch (r.) by Eric Anderson.
ordainedgeek 
You know you could pitch a cartoon series with your birds and give Bluey or Daniel Tiger some brisk competition. Not really joking.
I have no idea what to say to this, except that I don’t *think* I know any animators.
Just my wishful thinking that there was more hopeful and “life-explaining” content in the cartoons children are presented. These stories would be wonderful!