I Saw Three Swans Go Flying By (Amy Palko)
Faith to Fly
The swans are flying again. Their great wings are beating in time to their own inner rhythm, moving through the blue like white sails tacking their way across open water. Long necks outstretched, creating a line from tail to bill that speaks of an elegant focus, undeniable yet inscrutable. They fly past my window, these three large swans, circling the trio of little lochs that skirt the edge of land and river, before arching their wings back and throwing their wide webbed feet forward. The water sprays up on either side, some droplets falling on long ivory feathers, others falling back to rejoin the collective.
And then there they are: picture postcard perfect. Three swans gliding out across the smooth glass surface of the lochan, one following the other, each serpentine neck the exact copy of the others, each sweep of wing feather, each deep ochre of bill. One rises up slightly, raises both wings, and spreading them fully wide, begins to flap them against the prevailing breeze; the noise admonishes a troupe of squabbling gulls plundering the lochside bins, and then the swan settles once again into graceful poise.
Before long, they take to the skies once again. Their wide wings extend to full width, their powerful pinions moving in synchronous motion pulling their large white forms skywards. It all looks so improbable. How can these white giants pull themselves free from the suck and drag of the water and ascend so assuredly? How can these birds of the water make the transition from loch to sky look so damn effortless, while I am left grounded, both feet solidly connected to the floor beneath?
It was while running these questions through my head, lamenting my flightless state, that I remembered a quote by J.M. Barrie, author of the book that inspired the flight of so many children’s imaginations, Peter Pan. He once stated that, “The reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.” Perfect faith – what is it to have perfect faith? And is it so wholly unachievable for humankind to find this state of perfect faith within themselves?
I’ve always been quite resistant to the word ‘faith’. For me it conjured up too much of an organized religion’s insistence on blind obedience. Obedience has never been something I aspired to. But lately I’ve been giving ‘faith’ some more thought, trying to recognize it when it presents itself, allowing it expression when I would formerly repress it, allowing myself to touch it, taste it – hesitantly at first, but now with a growing confidence. It now seems conceivable to me that it is possible to place trust in the intangible, the indefinite, the invisible. After all, it is so often the invisible that makes life worth living in the first place.
And I’m beginning to find that faith isn’t something intrinsically antithetical to my way of being. My need to be autonomous. My need to be one unto myself. That I can, perhaps, have both. That I can accept the unity and the duality of what it means to be alive on this earth, in this skin. In fact, I would go further and say if I cannot first experience one then I cannot ever hope to know the other. To recognize oneness, the interconnectedness of all life, then I must also embrace my separation, that sense of individuation, as Jung puts it.
But, of course, it is within that separateness that faith erodes. We forget that we are a part of a whole and begin to think we are alone. Isolated individuals shipwrecked on an island of rational absolutism. Faith, even of the imperfect kind, the kind that means we cannot take to the skies with our feathered brethren, allows us to sense the connections between our tangible existence and our intangible belief in something ineffable, something infinite, something that resides in the essential selves of all living things on this planet.
And I think this brings me to the crux of my uneasiness with the concept of faith: we have been taught that the divine, the numinous, is outside. In fact, not only outside, but upwards and at a great distance. Something that needs to be mediated and interpreted. Something that is too great for just ordinary living souls to appreciate and connect with. For me, having faith would require that I give up some part of myself to some other who, as an initiate, had attained some form of spiritual superiority. I’m questioning this now. Perhaps faith doesn’t require the trappings with which it has traditionally been bedecked. Perhaps one could have faith, without forsaking their belief in the divine spark that belongs in each and every beating heart.
I stand, both feet firmly on the ground, arms outstretched, open to the breeze, that salt sea tang tingling across my tongue as I inhale deep gulps of fresh air. The swans are flying again. But it is not for me to fly too. James Barrie may have blessed his Peter with the ability to fly, but even he recognized that it is not within us to practice such perfect faith. It remains an aspiration. A sweet target that the swans with their outstretched necks may reach, but for me, I remain upon the earth. My heart, however, my heart knows what it is to defy gravity, what it is to take flight, what it is to soar above lochs and land.
The swans are flying again. And this time, my heart flies too.
Amy Palko can be found at www.amypalko.com.
