Read this passage over the first time make a note of what attracts you to it, the next time, what creates discomfort for you, the third time carry the story with you and allow it to reveal its meaning to your life. 

 

A man found an eagle's egg and put it in the nest of a backyard hen.  The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All his life the eagle did what the backyard chickens did, thinking it was a backyard chicken.  It scratched the earth for worms and insects.  It clucked and crackled.  And it would thrash its wings and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew old.  One day it saw a magnificent bird above it in a blue, cloudless sky.  It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagel looked up in awe.  "Who is that?" it asked.

"That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said a neighbour.  "It belongs to the sky.  We belong to the earth - we're chickens."

So the eagle lived and died a chicken, because that is what it thought it was.