At the beginning of time, there was a beautiful garden called Paradise. Adam and Eve lived in that garden and life was wonderful and good. The garden gave them everything they needed.

They lived together in perfect harmony with nature. They were surrounded by fruitful trees, beautiful flowers and plants, colourful birds and contented animals. They took care of the garden and it provided them with everything they could wish for. The sun kept them warm, they ate the fruit from the trees and they bathed in the warm, clear waters of the lake.

They were created to be part of a perfect world, to live there in Paradise but they were forbidden one thing. They were told never to eat the fruit from a tree called ‘The Tree of Forbidden Knowledge’.

For many years Adam and Eve lived happily in Paradise and never went near the tree. Then one day Eve began to hear a voice inside her head. She wondered about the tree. Why not eat the fruit? What does it mean? What could the tree tell her? What harm could it do?

Eve was tempted. She ate the forbidden fruit and life would never be the same again. Paradise had been all purity and goodness but, from the tree, Eve learned the meaning of bad and evil. Eve shared this knowledge with Adam and they were banished from the garden into the world we now know. They learned about lies, pain, hunger, cruelty and hate. Their paradise was lost.

This was very sad, but the story does not end there. Beneath the tree, a new bird was born from the first rose to bloom on a rosebush. The bird sang beautifully. Its feathers were brilliant.

Adam and Eve were chased from Paradise by an angel wielding a flaming sword. A spark of fire fell from that sword into the bird’s nest. The nest caught fire and the bird was lost in the flames. Then a miracle happened! From an egg in the nest, a new bird flew into the sky and that was when the one and only phoenix bird came into the world.

We all meet the phoenix in our own lives. We never see it, but we know of its presence. It came from Paradise and it will be with mankind forever. It travels from north to south and over land, sea, deserts and mountains. It visits our villages, towns and cities. It visits babies in their cradles, children in schools and workers in the offices and factories.

The bird that rose from the ashes in that nest renews itself every year. It crashes and burns to death in a burst of flames. However, it rises again from its own ash in even greater splendour. It visits everyone and fills lives with light, beauty, colour, music, poetry and song.

The phoenix bird visits young children and gives them contentment, innocence and hope for the future, before they grow up to taste the fruit of knowledge and learn about the hardships and troubles they will face in life.

The phoenix bird rose from the ashes in paradise and so we know we can too. As Eve first tasted the fruit of knowledge, we must too, and we know that there will always be good and evil in our lives. When everything goes wrong we must be like the phoenix bird; we must rise from the ashes and find a good life again.