The Swallow's Return

When it comes to perseverance and sheer determination, I never cease to be amazed by the tiny swallow.   While small, it has a larger than life journey every year.  

The task of flying from South Africa to Scotland is no simple feat, and if we witness their arrival in the UK, we know they’ve survived an incredibly treacherous journey over sea and desert, through all weathers.  I have kept their wonderfully made mud nests in the porch and am looking forward to when they fill them with some new broods this summer.  A space was cut in the wooden garden shed door, some years ago, so the swallows can always return to their beautifully built nests of previous seasons.  Each year I look forward to when their swoops, chatters, and twitters become part of this northern Scotland tapestry, lifting all our hearts.

As friends in South Africa have observed, they wistfully say goodbye to the swallows around March 10th.  Between then and late April here in the far north, the tiny but agile creatures are spanning huge distances, traveling over 200 miles a day at low altitudes to reach their destination as quickly as possible.  It has been amazing to witness their arrival in these gardens on exactly the same day, for many years (April 24). Migration is a truly hazardous time and many swallows die from starvation, exhaustion and in storms.

In TS Elliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ he writes ‘April is the cruellest month’.  I have often wondered about that seemingly harsh view of Springtime, with all its life and energy.  Other poets and artists have echoed similar sentiments in their writings.  As time goes on, I’ve come to understand this poignant phrase of poetry more deeply. 

“April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.”

No doubt the poet is evoking that familiar feeling of comfort, self-protection and hibernation, which is common in all of us during the winter months, and then can be so easily disturbed by sudden and painful change.

But T.S.Eliot was writing in a world that had seen the literal 'Wasteland' of the First World War, only a few years before he wrote his epic poem.  The whole world was still emerging fearfully from the darkness and horror.  There were huge challenges, economically, politically and spiritually for Western civilisation.

Maybe, like me, you followed the recent space shuttle exploration around the moon.  Watching it was awe inspiring and moved many of us beyond our familiar everyday mindsets to something beyond, something far-reaching in scope and reality.  The words shared by the astronauts before they entered the 40 minute radio silence were powerful.  Suddenly our minds and hearts were opened to a renewed sense of hope, possibility and risk, light in the darkness of our times, and a message of love.  It was awesome to see the shuttle make its final stretch back to earth, and to witness that ending splash in the ocean, completing their epic journey.

Every one of us is on a journey - maybe not to the moon - but we have travelled distances in our personal lives, including painful experiences and disappointments that ask us to take a deep look at ourselves.  The choices we make along the way and in response to these things form who we are.  Am I someone who holds onto shame, fear and resentment?  Or do I practice love as described in the age-old verses of 1 Corinthians 13, so often read in traditional wedding ceremonies?

Growth does not come easy.  Transition contains its own struggle - of breaking ground and travelling long distances, literally and metaphorically - in order to birth new life and create fresh pathways.  The swallow shows us that growth, birth and all good hopes for the future cannot happen without taking great risks and persevering in love.