THE CONDOR AND THE CHICKENS

The condor is the largest bird in the world. His motherland is in the Andes of South America.

One day, a woman found a condor’s egg in the mountain. She brought it down to her house and put it under a hen that was nesting on a new brood. Not long after, a little condor was hatched out at the same time as the hen's own chickens. The mother loved him as much as her other children, and she brought him up as a chicken.

The little condor grew like his brothers and sisters, clucking and cackling. He scratched in the earth for worms and seeds. He would flap his wings now and then, and sometimes take a few steps in the air without really managing to fly.

One day, now well grown up, he saw a large bird hovering gracefully and majestically, high up in the sky. As he watched, his heart started throbbing. His body was electrified. He felt a power within him, urging him to run to the highest place and launch himself into the air. There he would spread his wings and fly like that large bird above his head.

He was burning to obey that innermost impulse, when his mother came along. Excitedly, he asked her : « Mama, what is that wonderful bird, which is so large and flies so high in the sky? » His mother looked annoyed. « It's only a condor »,  she said, « a useless thing that daydreamers see in the sky. Condors don't give us anything to eat, so forget about them ! »

"We don't belong in the sky," added another old hen, "we belong on the earth. We are chickens. »

The young condor understood the law of the chicken. Besides, he did not know any other. He stored his wings forever. For him, his wings stopped to exist. He never thought about them; he went on living and died like a chicken.

I believe that this story is the saddest one that I ever heard, since it is nearly word for word the story of my Amerindian friends of the Andean high plateau.

At the beginning, my Amerindian friends were real condors, but another people conquered them and forced them to lower their wings. Afterwards, my friends made a great deal of heroic effort to take flight, but five hundred years later many of them continue to live and die like chickens.

This story is the story of all Amerindians, be they from the South, the North the East or the West. It is also the story of the former slaves and of all the peoples and individuals who do not know that they have their own wings within themselves or who do not know anymore how to use them, or are afraid or do not dare or do not believe…

It is also the story of the world only concerned with economic performance. Everything that does not earn money is despised, criticized, abandoned eliminated. Education, health, politics, wisdom, beauty spirituality, leisure and simple humanity are considered useful inasmuch as they help to win money. The condors have no more value since they do not give us something to eat…

This story of a condor that has become a chicken is the story of our alienated world that believes in nothing, or believes in any god , except in the one that gives wings so as to fly towards him.

This story is present in that Church of civil servants who are suspicious of wide dreams and who do not really believe in that « Kingdom » that was Jesus’ reason to live and to die.

I

t is also the story of myself who seldom dares to believe that I can be something else than a chicken.

As for Jesus, he was a young condor. He dared fly with his own wings. Yet, the down-to-earth chicken, the well balanced chicken, the before all else security chicken, the chicken that know what is convenient for the common good made sure to kill it.

This crime is committed on a daily basis at all levels and very often with the best intentions in the world.

Mozart murdered…

                                                                            Eloy Roy

Translated from the French by Patricia McHugh and Jacques Bourdages