learning

Story: Sincere Flattery

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 1 Comment
A green and yellow bird facing to the left. It has a grey beak with a dramatic hook at the end.

October 18, 2026

Isaiah 45:1-7
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10

On most days, the i’iwi and the akiapola’au don’t have much to say to one another. The i’iwi is red and black, the akiapola’au is yellow and black, except when it’s a young one, like this one, whose feathers are still pale green. The i’iwi sips nectar from flowers, the akiapola’au pulls caterpillars from tree bark. The i’iwi tends to favor the tops of trees or the middle branches, the akiapola’au hops along branches looking for signs of small bugs or worms.

So yes. They don’t talk to one another much.

One day, though, a young akiapola’au was higher in the branches, and an i’iwi was lower in the branches. He watched the akiapola’au as she pulled at a caterpillar with her hooked top beak and maneuvered it into her mouth.

“Yuck,” said the i’iwi. “And such a lot of work for something that doesn’t taste that good.”

“I like it fine,” said the akiapola’au, who did.

“I eat bugs when I have to,” said the i’iwi, “but best of all is flower nectar. You can’t beat it. It’s the best.”

“I’ve never had it,” said the akiapola’au, who hadn’t. “Where do you find it? What does it look like? Does it hide in flowers?”

“It’s not a bug that hides in flowers,” explained the i’iwi. “Flowers make this liquid all on their own. You poke your beak into the blossom and sip it up.”

“And that’s good?” wondered the akiapola’au.

“Oh, it certainly is,” assured the i’iwi. “Much better than bugs. And we’ve both got this nice curved beak. It should be really easy for you to sip nectar. You should try it.”

The i’iwi flew off, satisfied that he’d been a big help. The akiapola’au kept hopping up the branch, eating a couple of bugs and another caterpillar and enjoying them, but now wondering if she was missing something. She found herself on a branch that ended in a cluster of ohi’a blossoms. “If I’m going to try it, there’s no time like the present,” she told herself, and hopped into the flowers.

It’s true that the i’iwi’s curved beak is a great help in pulling nectar from flowers. And it’s true that the akiapola’au has a curved beak – but it’s not the same curve at all. More to the point, inside the i’iwi’s curved beak is a tongue that’s as long as the beak is – and that’s not true for the akiapola’au. They’ve got a tongue, but it fits inside the short lower beak, not the long upper beak. Her hooked beak went into the flower, but she had no tongue there to pull out the nectar.

She worked at it, though – she was determined to try that nectar – and finally managed to get her short straight lower beak into the flower. She felt around with her tongue. It was awkward. She felt silly. But she did it. She got the nectar.

“Yuck!” she said. It was, she thought, sickeningly sweet.

“What are you doing?” said a voice. It was her mother, who’d flown in while she was fussing in the blossoms.”

“I’m trying the nectar,” said her daughter. “An i’iwi recommended it. He said it was better than bugs. He seemed to know what he was talking about. And we both have long curved beaks, so it made sense, didn’t it?”

Her mother thought about it for a bit, and said, “It made some sense, but I think you’ve found out it didn’t make as much sense as you thought. Long beaks aren’t all alike, are they?”

“No,” said her daughter, “and it turns out that i’iwi and akiapola’au don’t have the same idea of what tastes good.”

“Was it worth trying?” said her mother.

“I think so,” said her daughter, “but once was enough.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in full ahead of time, but I tell them from memory and improvisation. The story as I wrote it and the story as I told it are not exactly the same.

Photo of a juvenile akiapola’au by Eric Anderson.

Story: How to Argue with Your Mother

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 1 Comment
A small yellow green bird perched on a bare branch with a blue sky beyond it. The bird faces left and has a short slightly curved black beak, and black feathers just in front of and behind its eye.

October 11, 2026

Exodus 32:1-14
Matthew 22:1-14

Sometimes a mother ‘amakihi lays two eggs, sometimes she lays three. This season had been a two-egg season. They both hatched. Both chicks grew and thrived. Both chicks quickly developed ideas about how they wanted things to go that weren’t precisely the same as their mother’s.

Both of them quickly developed very clear ideas about what and when they wanted to eat. Sometimes they agreed, shouting for nectar in chorus. Sometimes they disagreed, with one calling for bugs and another calling for spiders. Taking care of them required a lot of hopping.

They didn’t always get what they wanted. They did always get what the needed, even if they didn’t think so at the time.

As they approached the time to learn to fly, though, another difference appeared between them. Both of them argued with their mother. A lot. It was frequently about food, since there wasn’t much else to argue about as chicks in a nest. They also argued with their mother about how far along the branch they could go from the nest, and how many wingbeats they could take before she told them to stop, and most of all, whether they were ready for that first flight.

They both argued. But the female of the two tended to get more excited in her arguments than her brother. She’d bring in any explanation she could think of for why she should be allowed that first flight now, today, at this moment, here I go, what do you mean I’m not ready, Mom?

The male argued just as hard, but there was one thing he did that his sister didn’t. He asked questions. He asked a special kind of question. He asked how his mother would know – and how he might know – that he was ready to fly.

So his mother answered by telling him things that don’t make any sense to me, because I don’t have wings or feathers. She talked about certain feathers that had to be firmly in place. She talked about wing muscles that had to be strong enough to hold his weight. She talked about what he needed to be aware of in the sky, and she’d ask him about them as he fluttered his wings on the branch. Do you see the tree trunks there? Which way will you go to avoid them? Do you feel the wind? Which was is it blowing? Is it soft or strong?

When he could answer those questions, she told him, he’d be ready to fly.

“Do you promise?” he said.

“I promise,” she said.

A couple days later – which doesn’t seem like long but it’s a long time for a young bird – he checked his feathers. They looked good. He moved his wings back and forth, and realized he could hold himself up with them. He looked out from his branch, and named the things he saw to himself, and checked the wind, and decided how he’d go.

“I’m ready,” he told his mother.

“Are you?” she said.

He told her what I just told you, and she cocked her head to the side to think about it.

“You promised,” he said.

“I did,” she said. “So fly.”

His sister burst into protest. “Why does he get to go? Why don’t I get to go?” she called as her brother beat his wings and leapt into the air. “Why didn’t you promise me?”

“I promise you that you can fly when you’re ready,” mother said. “Are you?” And she ran through the things she’d gone over with her son, now singing merrily in a neighboring tree.

“When you can do these things,” said mother, “it will be time to fly. I promise.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in full ahead of time, but I tell them from memory and inspiration. The story as you read it does not precisely match the way I told it.

Photo of a young Hawai’i ‘amakihi by Eric Anderson.

Story: Love Achieved

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / Leave a comment

October 4, 2026

Isaiah 5:1-7
Philippians 3:4b-14

The first thing a newly hatched baby bird does is to teach. Teach? Teach. A hatchling teaches its parents what it needs, what they’ll eat, what makes them comfortable. Even an experienced parent will learn new things from a new chick. A first time parent learns more than I can describe in a short story like this.

A parent – in this case a mother – learns a lot about parenting from their own parents, of course, and from other friends and family who know more about it. Our first time mother had eagerly sought her own mother’s advice, not just when she had eggs, but before that when she’d sought a husband.

“How will I know that I’m in love?” she’d asked her mother.

“Look for a bird who is kind, attentive, responsible, and lifts your spirits,” said her mother. “The bird will show you those things. That’s how you’ll know you’re in love.”

Mother’s advice had been pretty good. She’d found a kind, attentive, and responsible bird, and he had raised her spirits. They’d built their nest together harmoniously and they’d eagerly awaited the hatching of their three eggs.

Then they’d hatched, and the learning began.

The first thing she learned was that the three hatchlings were all very different. They sounded different. They were hungry at different times, except for when they were all hungry at the same time. One liked to cuddle near her head, another liked to be beneath her wings. And then they’d shift what they liked.

It was so confusing.

Most confusing of all was that her chicks didn’t show her the things that she’d looked for in finding a husband. None of the chicks showed much kindness to her or to each other, especially when they were hungry. None of them were really attentive. They were constantly looking off at different things. They certainly weren’t responsible, hopping out of the nest at random times before they were even close to having the ability to fly.

It was really frustrating. How was she supposed to love these little bundles of needs?

“How am I supposed to love my chicks?” she asked her mother, and launched into describing all the ways in which they weren’t like her husband, or like her friends, or like her parents or aunties or uncles.

Her mother, I’m afraid to say, laughed out loud. “Children aren’t like husbands,” she said. “You love them before they learn how to be kind, or attentive, or responsible. You love them by teaching them to be those things, and you love them when they try and fail to be those things. You love them by keeping them fed and warmed and comforted and safe. You love them by guiding them to become the kind of bird you want to be, and the kind of bird you would fall in love with.”

“This will change?” said her daughter.

“It can,” said her mother. “I won’t lie – there are ‘apapane who prefer to remain selfish and flighty and irresponsible. But it will change. You’ll be surprised at how fast it does.”

“Did I do the same thing when I was newly hatched?” asked her daughter.

“Of course you did,” said mother, “and so did I. But you grew into a bird I’m proud of and delighted to be with. Now if you could use some help with the chicks?”

“Oh, yes,” sighed her daughter. “They’re all hungry again, and I could use the help.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in full ahead of time, but I tell them from memory and improvisation. The story as I wrote it and the story as I told it do not precisely match.

Photo of an ‘apapane by Eric Anderson.

Story: The Shallow Cormorant

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments

August 30, 2026

Exodus 3:1-15
Matthew 16:21-28

Unusually, today’s story isn’t about a Hawaiian bird. It’s about a bird you’ll find along the coasts, lakes, and rivers of North America. You’ll find them way up north in Canada or Alaska in summer, and as far south as the shores of Mexico in winter. It’s called the double-crested cormorant, and I remember seeing these birds when I was a child in New England.

Like the noio or the koa’e kea of Hawai’i, the cormorant fishes for its food. Both the noio and the koa’e kea, however, fly over the sea and dive down to catch fish when they see them. The cormorant swims along the surface, then swims with its webbed feet down beneath the surface to catch fish. They’ll stay under up to half a minute, which is a long time to hold your breath, and they can swim quite deep.

Well. They can. There was one cormorant, however, who simply refused to dive deeper than a few feet. You know how it is. Some dives had gone badly for him, and he’d come up coughing and gasping for breath. “Try it again,” someone had said, without saying anything about how it could go better, and down he’d gone, got confused and frightened, and come up again gasping and coughing.

“No more of that,” he said. “It’s shallow dives for me.”

Other cormorants would swim 25 or 30 feet down in the ocean water, but not him. No more than five feet. Maybe six. He might dab his beak down a little farther to get a fish, but no more. Definitely no further.

One day he surfaced from a dive next to a friend. He’d already eaten the fish he’d caught four feet below the surface. His friend, however, was wrestling with a much bigger fish. It took some work and a couple tosses in the air to get it lined up right, but finally he ate it and looked really satisfied.

“You’re lucky,” said the shallow-diving cormorant. “I don’t see fish that big very often.”

His friend was surprised and a little puzzled. “I see them all the time,” he said. “They’re right down near the bottom.”

“Oh, the bottom,” said the shallow-diving cormorant. “You’re likely to find anything there.”

“You don’t go to the bottom?” said his friend. “I thought everybody did.”

“I dive as far as I need to,” said the shallow-diving cormorant. “I don’t need anything on the bottom.”

“But there’s these amazing fish down there,” said his friend. “Wait here; I’ll bring one up.”

He dove down, leaving the shallow cormorant alone on the surface… briefly. Because he came up quickly, carrying another of the big fish in his beak, and looking forward to sharing it with his friend. On the surface, though, he was alone. He saw a black speck heading for a perching rock. The shallow cormorant had flown away.

He asked his auntie about it later, who sighed. “Some birds are like that,” she said. “They’re content with what’s obvious, what’s on the surface, what’s easy. If you go deeper, you discover things, but they don’t want to know those things. They’re content with the surface.

“But if you go deeper, you find delights you otherwise would never have known.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in full ahead of time, but I tell them from memory and improvisation. The story as I wrote it does not exactly match the story as I told it.

Photo of a double-crested cormorant by Eric Anderson.

Over Coffee

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments
A coffee cup

“Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people…” – John 4:28

I can’t remember when
theology so stimulated me
I left my water jar behind
to tell my neighbors what I’d learned.

But then I cast my mind
upon these Monday mornings with a friend
when our thoughts range so far
and our hands clasp the coffee cups before us.

She left the water jar, while I
would finish the coffee first,
and savor wisdom new and sweet
and sharp and challenging.

A poem/prayer based on John 4:5-42, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year A, Third Sunday in Lent.

Story: The Wisdom of Flight

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments

January 4, 2026

Jeremiah 31:7-14
John 1:1-18

“What is wisdom?” wondered the ‘amakihi as he flew through the sky.

“What is wisdom?” wondered the ‘amakihi as he sipped on ohi’a nectar.

“What is wisdom?” wondered the ‘amakihi as he settled down to sleep at night.

“What is wisdom?” wondered the ‘amakihi as he woke in the morning.

“What is wisdom?” is, in fact, an extremely good question whether you’re an ‘amakihi or a human being. Wisdom, after all, tends to prevent a lot of foolishness. Foolishness, on the other hand, tends to happen in the absence of wisdom.

“What is wisdom?” wandered the ‘amakihi over the course of the day.

One of the features of wisdom is that when someone who is wise doesn’t know or doesn’t understand something, they do things to learn more about it. They look around at things. They measure and they think about what they’ve measured. If they’re human, they might read something, or a lot of somethings. They ask others to see what they know.

Whether you’re a human or an ‘amakihi, a good one to ask would be tutu.

“Tutu,” asked the ‘amakihi, “what is wisdom?”

Tutu was pleased. It was a wise question – if you don’t know something, wisdom says, “Ask.” He’d made a wise choice about who to ask – grandparents often know things. And he was asking about something important, wisdom itself.

She replied with a question of her own: “What is knowledge, grandson?”

“Knowledge?” he asked. “I hadn’t thought much about that… it seemed kind of obvious. If I know something that’s true, that’s been demonstrated to me, that’s knowledge. If I think I know something that isn’t true, or if I simply don’t know something, that’s not knowledge. Is that right?”

“That’s right,” said Tutu. “Now let me ask something else.”

“Are you going to answer my question?” asked her grandson, who was starting to worry that if he answered all her questions she wouldn’t get around to answering his.

“I am,” she said. “Now here’s my question: Can you fly with your wings closed?”

He opened his beak to reply, then stopped. It doesn’t make much sense, but he realized that sometimes while flying, he would close his wings. Not for long. Not all the time, obviously. But for a few moments in many flights, he would be flying with his wings closed.

“Yes,” he said carefully. “For a moment or two.”

“How do you know whether to close your wings in flight?”

“It’s complicated,” he said. “How high up am I? How much do I need to rest my wings for a moment? Will I need to make a quick turn or slow down to land? There isn’t a simple answer.”

“That’s right, there isn’t,” she told him. “Knowing that you can fold your wings in flight is knowledge. You know it’s something you can do. Choosing the right moment to do it – or the right moment not to do it – that’s wisdom.

“Wisdom is when you consider what you don’t know for certain, what might happen, or what might not happen if you do something, and then make a good choice. Wisdom looks at what you know, and asks whether you should.

“That, grandson, is wisdom.”

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from memory and inspiration on Sunday mornings. What you have just read does not precisely match how I told it.

Photo of an ‘amakihi in flight by Eric Anderson.

Story: Imitation

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 2 Comments

May 11, 2025

Acts 9:36-43
John 10:22-30

How is a young bird, or a young turtle, or a young person supposed to figure out how to be an adult bird, or an adult turtle, or an adult human being? People, at least, get some instructions from their elders. We get taught how to get dressed, and what things are good to eat (or at least good for you to eat; opinions differ on whether things that are good for you are tasty enough to eat), and especially important things like, “Don’t touch the boiling tea kettle on the hot stove!”

Birds probably don’t get quite that much teaching. Certainly they don’t get the years of it that we do as we’re growing up.

A young ‘akekeke was learning how to be an ‘akakeke. He’d already made one trip from Alaska to Hawai’i, just as the kolea do, and he’d been sleeping and eating and flying about ever since. But he was confused.

You see, there were creatures who did very different things than ‘akekeke did, and he wondered if their ways might be better.

Mind you, there were plenty of creatures who did very similar things. Kolea and hunakai and ‘akekeke all hunted through the grasses and tidepools and rocks for insects, snails, and so on. If he imitated them, things went pretty well. He tried to imitate the ae’o, but he didn’t have long pink legs to hold his body out of the water of the fishpond and he ended up gasping and spluttering as he flapped his miserable way to shore.

The least successful of all was when he tried to imitate a honu. He flopped into the water in a calm spot and lingered below the surface. Then he tried to eat some seaweed on the underwater rocks. He choked on the water, of course, and once more hauled his bedraggled self onto the beach.

He looked about and saw his mother.

She asked, “What are you up to, son?”

“I’m learning,” he said. “I’m learning to be an ‘akekeke.”

She looked around at the other ‘akakeke on the shore, none of whom were trying to feed like a honu. “How?”

“By imitating what I see,” he said.

“Are you learning anything?” she asked.

“I’m learning that some things don’t work,” he said, and coughed up a little more water.

“I’m not saying you can’t learn anything from a honu,” said his mother, “but for basic things like eating and flying, I don’t think there’s much they can teach you. I don’t think you can eat the way they do, and they certainly can’t fly the way you do.”

“I suppose not,” said the ‘akekeke, who was a little sad about not learning anything with his imitations that day.

“You have taught me something today, something I can imitate,” he said.

“What’s that, son?” asked his mother.

“You’ve taught me to be kind.”

Whether we wear feathers, shells, or rubbah slippahs on our running feet, let’s all imitate those who are kind.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories ahead of time, but I tell them from memory (plus improvisation) during worship. What you have just read is not necessarily how I told it.

Photo of an ‘akekeke (ruddy turnstone) by Eric Anderson. Not far away, grazing in a shallow pool, there was a honu (green sea turtle).

Story: Nene Students

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 1 Comment
A photo of a nene, a wild Hawaiian goose, standing by a pond facing away.

January 15, 2025
(for a meeting of the Hawai’i Conference Committee on Ministry)

Nene School was in session. There was a new teacher that year, but he was getting help from a more experienced nene. She had been his teacher some years before. And because he was new, he had a relatively small class. Just three students.

Two of them were siblings, a brother and sister. The third was immediately interested in Food Identification part of the curriculum – Nene School basically consists of Flight and Food. The new teacher thought he’d be a good student, but mostly he was hungry. Time after time the teacher would have to rush over as the student reached out for yet another inedible item.

It kept him hopping.

He hoped that the brother and sister would be good flight students, since they’d already learned to fly together. His hopes were dashed, however, the first time they took off for basic formation flying. Honks of “You’re took close!” and “Get away from me!” resounded over the rocks and forest. He could barely be heard over them to try to coach them into position. Eventually there was a collision, and the two bruised siblings settled down to the ground to continue their recriminations.

The teacher could feel his teacher’s eyes on the back of his head, watching him as his class turned into a full-fledged disaster – that’s a disaster with feathers on. Or fluttering down from the sky because they didn’t stay on.

This went on for a week, and things didn’t get better. The hungry young nene never seemed to listen or retain what he’d been told. The siblings fought on the ground, climbing, cruising, descending, and on the ground again. The watching teacher said nothing. The young teacher got desperate.

As the class ended with more flying feathers, more angry honking, and a certain amount of vomit from an ill-considered berry, he burst out in fury: “You are the worst nene I’ve ever met! You’ll never learn! I’m sorry you were ever hatched!”

Shocked, the students flew away.

He turned to find his teacher standing right behind him. He couldn’t read the look in her eyes. “What?” he challenged.

“I’m disappointed,” she said.

“I’m disappointed in them, too,” he growled.

“I’m disappointed in you,” she said.

“What?”

“Haven’t you noticed that the siblings have been carefully listening to every word you’ve said about finding food? Haven’t you noticed that they never ask you twice about it? That they’ve learned so much in just a week?”

He hadn’t noticed.

“Haven’t you noticed that the third one sticks right by you in flight? He was awkward the first day, but he’s been right off your wingtip ever since. Haven’t you noticed?”

He hadn’t noticed.

“When they come back tomorrow, what are you going to say?” she asked, and then left him to consider.

The next morning, the three students stood anxiously before their teacher. They almost hadn’t come back. The older nene had persuaded them to come.

“I’m very sorry for what I said yesterday,” he said. “I had no business saying any of that. You’re here to learn, and I haven’t been teaching you very well.”

“Youngster,” he said to the hungry student, “I want you to keep an eye on the brother and sister here. They’ve done really well at learning what’s good to eat and what’s not. You can trust what they do.”

“And you two,” he said to the siblings, “can learn a lot from this youngster here. He’s been keeping good formation on me since the second day. Watch him. He’ll show you what to do.”

I won’t tell you that things went absolutely smoothly after that – there were still ruffled feathers and feelings, and the hungry student only gradually gave up whatever looked good at the time – but I will say that the students learned. All the students. One of whom was the teacher.

by Eric Anderson

I wrote this story as the opening devotional for a meeting of the Hawai’i Conference UCC Committee on Ministry Chairs.

Story: The Sweet Bug Mystery

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 4 Comments
An 'apapane (a red bird with black wings) feeding at a red ohi'a flower.

January 5, 2025

Jeremiah 31:7-14
John 1:1-18

The ‘elepaio has the reputation for being the most curious bird of the forest, but once there was an ‘apapane who was as curious as nearly any ‘elepaio. He had questions about everything. Why were his feathers brown when he was younger, and why did they turn red? Why did some trees have blossoms and others didn’t? Why did the days grow shorter and longer again?

He found answers to some of his questions, and he didn’t find answers to others of his questions. He never gave up asking them, though, and he never gave up trying to find out.

One morning, while enjoying a late morning snack of bugs, it suddenly occurred to him: Why do bugs taste sweet?

I’m not sure that bugs would taste sweet to you or to me, but the bugs he was eating that day definitely tasted sweet to him. He hadn’t thought about it before, but why should a bug taste sweet? Shouldn’t they be salty, or tangy, or something like that? Why sweet?

He asked around to see if anyone else knew, but nobody did. They hadn’t thought about it, and they weren’t all that interested. “If they taste good, that’s all that matters,” said one of his friends, and didn’t help any further. So the ‘apapane decided to watch and see what sweet bugs ate.

What they ate, he discovered, was a lot of things that he also ate. Those bugs ate fruit. They ate ohi’a nectar. They even ate other bugs who were eating sweet fruit and nectar. The sweetness of what they ate was being carried along to make them at least somewhat sweet.

“That’s amazing!” he said to himself. “But now the question is: Why is fruit sweet? Why is nectar sweet?”

Again, he went to friends and family to ask, and again they didn’t know. “It tastes good; that’s all that matters,” said the same friend. So he began to watch the trees, to see what they did to produce sweet fruit and flowers.

I’m afraid that being an ‘apapane rather than a human being meant that he never did learn the answer to that. He could see that the trees spread their leaves to the sun, but he couldn’t see the way that the green of the leaves combined water from the roots with energy of the sun to make the sweetness that made the tree grow. He couldn’t see that sweet sap being concentrated in the flowers to make nectar, and later in the fruits to feed the seeds of later trees. People have microscopes and chemistry equipment and lots of years asking and answering these questions. He didn’t.

He had to admit that he wouldn’t answer the question of sweet nectar, at least until he learned something new. For him, sweet nectar would remain a sweet mystery.

It never stopped him from enjoying it, though.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from memory and improvisation. There will be differences between the story I’ve written and the story I told.

Photo of an ‘apapane feeding from an ohi’a blossom by Eric Anderson.

Story: Important Things

/ Rev. Eric Anderson / 3 Comments
A cattle egret in tall grass.

December 8, 2024


Philippians 1:3-11

Luke 3:1-6

The cattle egret is a relatively quiet bird. Most of the time it goes about its business of hunting insects and such without talking about it. When a cattle egret has something to say, it will say it. But if it doesn’t have something to say, it doesn’t say anything.

Unlike a lot of people you’ve met, I’m sure.

There was another bird who really wanted a cattle egret to say something. I don’t know why a saffron finch decided that he wanted wisdom from a cattle egret, but he did. Maybe it was their relative sizes (rather small to quite impressively tall). Not that size reliably indicates wisdom. Maybe it was the bright white feathers, but color doesn’t tell you much about wisdom, either. Maybe it was the silence.

Not saying anything until you have something to say could be a good sign of wisdom.

At any rate, it’s wiser than saying something when you don’t have anything to say.

The saffron finch landed on the ground near a cattle egret and the two of them fed side-by-side without speaking for a while. The cattle egret ate bugs. The saffron finch ate one or two spiders and a good amount of seeds. Neither of them chose to speak with their mouths full.

When he was feeling pretty satisfied, the saffron finch asked, “What’s the most important thing?”

The cattle egret looked around to see if there were any other birds the finch might have been talking to. She didn’t see any, but she also didn’t think that this was a question a complete stranger was likely to ask her, so she didn’t say anything.

“No, really,” said the saffron finch. “What the most important thing?”

The cattle egret looked carefully at the saffron finch. He was clearly asking her, though she didn’t know why. She took a couple more mouthfuls of insects to give her time to consider the question. Then she cleared her throat and said:

“Love.”

She looked around and didn’t see any more bugs, so she nodded to the saffron finch and took off to find another spot with more bugs. When she got there, she was surprised to find the saffron finch landing beside her.

“Could you say that again?” he asked.

“Love,” she said, and went on eating.

“Really?” he asked.

“Love,” she repeated for the third time.

“I’m not sure I know how to love,” he said sadly.

The cattle egret paused her hunting for a moment and looked carefully at the saffron finch.

“Ask,” she said.

“Really?” he said.

“Ask,” she said.

I’m still not sure I’d go first to a cattle egret for wisdom – which is mostly my problem for not understanding what a cattle egret might say – but I have to agree with this cattle egret. What’s the most important thing? Love.

And if you’re not sure how to love: Ask.

by Eric Anderson

Watch the Recorded Story

I write these stories in advance, but I tell them from a combination of memory and improvisation, so it won’t sound exactly like you’ve just read.

Photo by Eric Anderson.