Meditation with Swallow

A young swallow has been learning to fly. As it stays low, I’ve felt more than once that it would graze the top of my head as I sit on my deck. It seems to prefer to circle the garage roof, around and around, then rest on the peak of the small shed nearby until it’s replenished its energy enough to try again.

I’ve read that swallows are a blessing—that if they nest on your land or in the eaves of your house, you are protected. I know the spirit of Swallow well. It has come to me once or twice while performing the shamanic journey, as well as during an initiatory ceremony, when Swallow channeled through me in skips, jumps, and turns—what could be described as my best attempt at expressing acrobatic flight, joy, and fun. 

This young one does not yet have the confidence to dip, dart, and dive like the seasoned fliers I used to watch over the lake in my old neighborhood. Watching them always peaked my wonder and awe. Their ability to wing it without a route, path, or agenda fascinated me. They would follow the insects, and sometimes, it seemed to me, just dance in the air for the fun of it, often dipping to touch the water with the tip of their wing, as if in a dare. This young swallow is learning steadily and slowly, continuing to work in tentative circles while his siblings ride the air swells and dart around one another high above. 

Words seem so inadequate to describe the energy of the flight of swallows. These birds exude grace and fun, and, I can say from the channeling experience, happiness, light-heartedness, and great joy. What can I learn from them today? I am noticing them, so I assume that they have something to teach me. Their energy always helps me to feel supported by the spirits of Nature, by Earth and its wisdom. 

Sometimes, when I’m walking, I see them dipping and darting up near the treetops. My heart seems to tune, very quickly now that I know them, into their joyful resonance. When I do, they gradually bring their flight closer to me, and I feel as if we are darting and diving together, dancing a flight at a level that I can reach. I always giggle with joy when they do, as if we’re playing a game together, as if they’ve invited me into their joyful play. 

I’ve noticed that they will not come closer on days when my heart is heavy or my mind is burdened with thought. On those days, my energy cannot tune into theirs enough to resonate and join their play. When I walk on those days, I get caught on a thorn or trip over a root, as if Nature were reflecting my own imbalance.

Nature is wise in this way. She knows what we are and where our balance is leaning. Is it in our thought, our worry, our desire for control? Is it in the darkest places of our heart? Is it in our closed sight which cannot see the joy that surrounds us as something that is also for us, that also we are worthy of experiencing? Is it bound to only our body, only our experience, and what is five feet in front of us? Is it limited to what we know? 

I try to learn from Nature every time I go walking. I learn from what I notice on that day, during that walk. What can I learn from watching the perseverant slug who crosses the wide road? What can I learn from the new Salal buds, happy in their bunches, joyful in their crowded section of the understory? What can I learn from the moss-covered Big Leaf Maple or the ferns that grow from it? Are there messages just for me or for us all? Sometimes it’s both. And there’s always a message that I can take from my time with Nature if I’m listening, seeing, noticing—especially when a question is weighing on my heart or mind. It seems that Nature always has an idea about what I can do first or next, or what I can keep in mind as I take a step in my life, or what we, as humans, can know about Life and how to live it. 

I remember during the Covid lockdown how the populations of swallows and other species seemed to boom. Without our rushing back and forth, without our worry or our focus on “work” or efficiency, without our intervention in the rhythm of the seasons, everything else was thriving. Could we thrive if we let go just a little?—if we allowed ourselves to slow down, if we tuned into the rhythms of Nature and experienced the energy of Life without a need for attention? It sounds almost too simple. 

But what a profound impact it had when we all stopped being industrious and simply focused on what is here now—the snow or the sun, the Robin or the Owl, the Forsythia or the Iris, the well-being of us or our neighbors. Listening to the land to know how we can be in healthy relationship with it; listening for it to tell us its needs and when it needs our attention; living in reciprocity with the wider world around us, rather than putting ourselves first, always. I sometimes wonder if we could ever get back to that on the scale we were able to during the lockdown, without having another mass event.

Even in that case, as we’ve seen, afterwards there is a kind of whiplash of our need for attention, or of our assertion of control not only over nature, but over other humans. It’s as if once we see that we are not essential, that we are not needed for our planet to thrive, we grasp onto what can make us feel important and inflate our self-importance in a way that must be validated by the attention of others. And that sort of action always ends in disappointment. The attention, the control, the power over others either fails to hold them in thrall or is never enough to satisfy us. Yet, the need for it persists because—well, today is not the day to explore the reasons for that behavior. Why not just be open to changing it in myself and sharing that openness with others? 

As I write this, the young swallow has returned to his perch on the peak of the shed, taking flight when he’s ready to diligently practice his turns. He surprises me by adding some new moves—an extra turn, as well as some height, which takes him through a sort of up and down figure 8. He comes closer to me, as he flies over the deck before turning around to make a pass over the garage. I am grateful for no sight of raptors as I sit and watch the swallow learning to fly with his own joy, learning how to be safe and also unbounded by worry or fear. I feel his tentative approach to the task, and I also know the joy that awaits him.

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