(I cannot find the original story, but I will do my best to reconstruct it from what I remember reading years ago. This is obviously not my work.)
There once was a monk who was traveling into town. In the marketplace he saw a merchant sitting in the shade against a building, selling birds. A piece of string was tied to the leg of each bird on one end and to the top of a pole on the other end. The birds flew round and round the pole in circles.
The monk immediately felt great compassion for the birds. “How much are they,” he inquired. When the merchant told him, the monk paid for every one of them.
The merchant handed the monk the pole and the monk untied the string from each bird. But the birds continued to fly round and round in circles as they had before, as they were used to.
The monk was greatly saddened that they birds were only partially free.
12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’[e] but you are making it ‘a den of robbers. (Matthew 12:13-14)
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