IMAGES OF A PARROT

"There is God. And there are images of God. And some people don't see any difference between the two.

A capable, good-hearted, and devout servant by the name of Felicite from Gustave Flaubert's 'A Simple Heart' fell prey to this confusion between God and God's images. She was alone and unappreciated, and her parrot Loulou became 'almost like a son, a lover to her', so much so that, when he died, she had him stuffed. Soon the gospel's image of the Holy Spirit as a dove began to merge with her stuffed parrot, and she fell 'into the idolatrous habit of saying her prayers on her knees in front of the parrot.' Finally, Flaubert wrote, as she breathed her last, 'she thought she saw, as the heavens opened, a gigantic parrot hovering over her head.' Abandoned by others, she transferred her love to the parrot, transforming it into a god. An earthly image morphed into a divine reality ...

[Believers] worship idols without even knowing it. Unlike Felicite's parrot, their gods are not made of the hard matter of this world and don't sit elevated on sacred pedestals. Instead, they dwell in their worshipers' minds and are made of the soft stuff of their own cherished ideas. They simply assume that who they believe God to be and who God truly is are one and the same. God is as large (or as small) as they make the Infinite One to be, and none of the beliefs they entertain about God could possibly be wrong ... Our hearts [are] factories of idols in which we fashion and refashion God to fit our needs and desires.

Yet the most powerful and seductive images of God are not the ones we craft in the privacy of our hearts. They are the ones that seep into our minds as we watch TV, read books, go shopping at the mall, or socialize with our neighbors. Slowly and imperceptibly, the one true God begins acquiring the features of the gods of this world ... To use Flaubert's metaphor, the dove of the Spirit becomes the parrot whose plumage bears a striking resemblance to our culture's values."

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