I was walking along the canal a few days ago in the light rain when suddenly beside me flew a swan, her white iridescent wings sweeping effortlessly (and silently) over the dark waters. Into the damp and cold greyness of an early Scottish January swooped a creature of light. Changeless as the seasons change around her, she was a harbinger of that deep down freshness of things that is ever old and ever new.
In a canine explosion next to me Bella set off alongside as fast as her Labrador legs, heart and lungs could carry her. Two more languid sweeps of the majestic wings and the swan was already out of reach with Bella stubbornly carrying on until even she could see she was outmatched by the great bird. We both looked at each other and agreed it had been a moment.
On the way home we passed the heron again remaining in the exact same place except this time he was taking his time swallowing a fish. The question of how herons, in their eternal, preternatural stillness can actually catch fish in these dark waters remains a mystery to me, and yet here was the evidence that the waiting had not been fruitless.
As I was ambling home I was thinking of the new year ahead and how the three creatures all offered their own contribution as to how it could be lived.
The serendipity of the swan's arrival ( you NEVER have your camera out in time) calls me to be open to moments of undeserved and unexpected grace and beauty. Traditionally swans symbolise purity and this encourages me that goodness and truth are not concepts to be fought over but never ending sources of life to be celebrated, regardless of what season we find ourselves in. The effortless nature and graceful beating of her wings inspires me to find that flow, where what I am called to be and to do is indeed what I am truly being and doing.
Bella's enthusiasm and energy inspires me to give my everything, to do nothing half heartedly and to leave it all on the field. To be able to respond immediately to life's surprises and to live utterly and even foolishly in that moment, knowing it may never come again. To doggedly (is this where the words comes from?!) keep going when you're out matched, because life is too short not to. After all we grow ever stronger by being constantly defeated by those things greater than ourselves. And courage comes from the French for heart (couer) ... a heartfelt participation in life.
The heron's timeless patience, echoing from our prehistory, is a call to ride out the restlessness, the constant fidgeting and endless distractions that thin out our ability to simply be where we actually are. So many of us 'live slightly apart from our body', are not fully present to our own selves or the moment we are in and miss more than we ever know. Paying attention, close attention to the situatedness of the life we are actually in rather than the one we wish we had opens us up to seeing signs of life where we may never have looked before. And through waiting, sometimes in the long hours of darkness, discover that joy does indeed come in the morning.
Thank you our feathered and furry friends.
Sublime. Thoughts of a pastor, a mystic and a poet. Wow.
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