Shadow Lake

The swan is gone. The lake is just covered with Canada Geese and a few ducks...and probably lurking snapping turtles of the sort that attacked the poor swan. I walked along the little path at the edge of the lake. I saw an owl there a few days ago, peering at me with his great round eyes. I looked out over the lake. I had been calling it Swan Lake for months, though its real name is Shadow lake

"At least I went here almost every day to see the swans," I thought, "I felt like they would always be here, but still I came, because they were so beautiful. I enjoyed their presence as fully as I could while they were here. I'm glad of that, at least."

My dear friend, writing about missing her grown children said ," I never thought they might be living in a different state. But we did that to all our parents."

Another friend, reading the section of my book about the sadness of adult children growing distant lives, separate from me, told me she had to put the book down at that point. She has one child on the cusp of adulthood. She couldn't think about that, while the night in its dark forboding silence crept about her. Every parent of grown children feels the tormenting tug of time, I think. I thought of my sons in far away lands, and my parents, and sisters, and brother.

When the swans were still here, circling the lake, I loved to stand and watch them. There was almost never anyone else there. Why weren't the shores thronged with people wondering at the lovely white forms gliding so magically across the sparkling water? At first I would take lots of photographs. But then, I realized I couldn't capture what I felt watching the swans in a photograph. It was better to just stand there in silent awe and enjoy the ephemeral moment. Now, gazing at the still water, I thought that perhaps they had gone to a better place, a place where waters are still, and dangers no longer lurk below. Beauty and peace rest upon a New World.

So, I sighed, the swans are gone. Their beautiful S curved necks are just a shadow of a memory. I walked away wondering what I should turn my gaze upon now,  quickly, before it vanished too and entered the realm of Shadow.

Job 14: 1-2

 ¹ “Mortals, born of woman,
   are of few days and full of trouble.
² They spring up like flowers and wither away;
   like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.

James 1:16-18

 ¹⁶ Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. ¹⁷ Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. ¹⁸ He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

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The Two Faces of a Swan

Do you ever get that message on your computer as you wait an interminable time for a page to load: "Not Responding."
"No kidding! I never dreamed it was something you weren't doing properly, my dear Dell, I just thought that God had put a stop to time."
The computer doesn't understand sarcasm however, and remains unresponsive until it decides it is good and ready to begin working again.

I don't love lack of response. I don't love it in computers, in my children, or in my prayers. It I ask a question or make a request, I expect an answer. And given the exceptionally rapid connection between my sensory and motor neurons, I expect an answer quickly. Some people refer to my personality type as "hyper". i prefer to think of it as "super conductivity between nerve synapses."

I headed to the swan lake a second time yesterday, hoping again that my prayers for the lonely male swan would be answered. I prayed that his mate would have returned. Instead, the lake was swarming with boats, and men with long poles with nets on the end, circling around the poor swan. I hurried to the water's edge where a woman with a large, fancy camera stood filming. I presumed she was a reporter of some kind.

"What's going on?" I asked.
"They are trying to catch him," she said, "He's injured and they hope to bring him to the humane society."
He looked fine to me, though frightened, as he continued to elude his captors. I presumed that since he didn't fly away, he was unable to fly. I know when he came to the lake, he had been injured in some way as the Neighborhood Association had gotten the pair of swans from a Bird Rehab center.
"He looks ok," I said.
"This side of him does," she answered, "But a snapping turtle got him. Ripped off half his face on the other side."
The swan turned and I saw what she was talking about. I saw how capturing the swan would be a kindness.
(This is not exactly the answer to prayer I was going for, I whispered to God.)
"What happened to the mate?" I asked, choking back tears, "Did the turtle kill her?"
"No, she flew away before this happened."
She flew away!? That ungrateful hussy.
"The male swan will often starve himself to death if the mate leaves. They mate for life," she said.
I knew then what had happened. The swan I had seen moping for his mate all week, never leaving the center rock in the lake, had stopped eating. His strength gone, he had succumbed to the advances of a snapping turtle. I was almost certain turtles never attacked grown swans, only babies. He must have already been weak.
I watched a little while longer, but unable to stand it any more, headed back home. I didn't want to write about this. It makes me unbearably sad. But it is impossible to not write about what fills my heart.

I am reading (again) Daniel Deronda by George Elliot. It is a great classic, and one everyone should read, as soon as they finish my book, I am Listening with a Broken Ear. In it, the protagonist is tormented by her own guilt over a choice she made that improved her life, but at the expense of others. She asks a friend, who has unwittingly become  her conscience: what would be best- to be miserable oneself or to be the cause of another's misery? He answers immediately, not knowing the specifics of her situation, that the first is far better.
"But what if you have no choice?" she asks.
"Then," he tells her, "Do everything you can to spread goodness. If you can't help the one you harmed, then perhaps you can help others."

I do believe this is the only antidote to the horror of life. There are two sides of life, and sometimes it is the beautiful face of a swan, but sometimes it turns and the destruction, and suffering, and agonies of loneliness, betrayal,and despair are exposed. I suppose first one should decide whether to be the female swan that flew away, or the lonely, ruined male she left behind. I pray that whenever I can, I choose not to consciously inflict pain on others. And if the choices I make have led to the irreversible pain of others, the best I can do now is try to find ways to bring joy to the world I have yet to encounter. Horrifying as it is, it is better to be the ruined, dying swan.

I liked the symbol of the swans, I told God, lying in bed feeling depressed, all the way until the mate flew away. And did the poor swan who was left really have to go through all that agony? Why do your lessons have to include pain?

God didn't answer. Instead, He put me to sleep, and sent me a dream. It was a dream so beautiful, so hopeful, so redemptive that I didn't want to wake up. And when I did wake up, I could not remember the dream, only its joy.

1 Corinthians 10:23-25

²³ “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive. ²⁴ No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.

Swan Songs

We were on autopilot, the dogs and I, on our usual run to the little lake in the adjoining neighborhood when I screeched to a stop along the shore. I really could not believe my eyes. On our dippy little pond, covered with water weeds were two magnificent swans.

The Canada Geese were all huddled at one end and looked like gnats next to the giant white swans. The swans had bright orange beaks with black knobs on them, and black extending to their dark eyes. The rest of the huge birds was pure white. Their necks curved in the classic sinuous s, and they made the little unassuming lake suddenly seem magical. I rubbed my eyes. Maybe they were really just large white geese? But no, these were swans. Out of the dregs of my memory I even clutched at the kind- Cygnet Swans. I knew cygnet also meant baby swan, but I vaguely recalled that this classic swan was also named Cygnet.

While I watched, the swans glided near, and my normally explosive dogs perked up, but were silent. I think they too were captivated by the beauty. A few geese also ventured near, thinking I had food most likely. With an explosion of enormous wings flapping, the larger swan tore after the geese, nipping at them. Several times over the many minutes I stood there, the swans attacked the geese. I felt sorry for the geese. After all, it had been their lake first.

 But swans! Here on little Shadow Lake! And it was a pair. Were they here to raise young?

I rarely see anyone by this little lake. The dogs and I go almost every day. It is lined on two sides by trees and a little path. The other two sides have houses along the banks. It is very small. No more than a quarter mile all around the edge. But I like to go to the tree covered path and look out over the little lake, and talk to the geese. I feel that for a moment, I am in nature. Not in the middle of a plain subdivision. My soul, which really belongs somewhere in the country soaks in those quiet moments of that little sanctuary, and then I am able to face the concrete and traffic again.

And now this in my little haven- swans!

Upon returning reluctantly home, I researched swans. The ones I had seen are indeed called Cygnet Swans, but more commonly Mute Swans. Their normal habitat usually only extends as far south as Maryland and North into Massachusetts and Canada. I wonder if they got tired of the constant onslaught of snow this year up North. I had instinctively known they were not in their usual setting.

Mute swans are not really mute. When angry or threatened, they emit a squawk.  Legends claim the swan is mute until its last moments. Upon dying, it breaks its silence and sings. Thus the famous "swan song". As far as I could tell, the only factual aspect of this might be that as it is dying, it is being threatened and it breaks its silence to squawk.


The Mute Swan is considered an invasive, non-indigenous species. For you kids preparing for your English AP exam, this means they crowd out other wildlife, and they were imported from somewhere else. Apparently, this is a source of controversy in the swan aficionado world. There is heated debate, with experts pointing to paintings from the 1500s of swans here in America, despite other experts claiming a latter importation date. And this is the part that floored me. In 2004, there was a nationwide program by our dear Uncle Sam to wipe out 85% of the mute swan population. This is because some experts claim that Mute Swans are so aggressive that they drive out other nesting wild fowl. Besides that, they eat prodigious amounts of water plants, leading to weed choked lakes no longer looking like green cesspools.(They phrased the danger a little differently.) Swans that become used to handouts from humans will become belligerant if food is then withheld. (so who doesn't?)


So as usual, the response is to kill them. Further research showed that the experts were wrong. Mute swans don't obliterate the vegetation, and don't chase out populations of wild fowl. And if people don't feed them, they will leave people alone, unless their nesting young are approached too closely. I for one, am rooting for the swans.


There are a lot of horrendous things going on in the world, even in my own small sphere of friends. Really horrible, unbearable difficulties. It is easy for sensitive souls to be swallowed up in all that despair. But then God sends a swan. Something beautiful, and unexpected. Something that makes me stop, catch my breath, clutch my heart. Something pure and white and holy in its loveliness. Something to remind me that even on the weed choked ponds of life, swans sometimes come to roost.

Psalm 104: 2-3,12,24

² The LORD wraps himself in light as with a garment;
   he stretches out the heavens like a tent
 ³ and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters.
¹² The birds of the sky nest by the waters;
   they sing among the branches.
 ²⁴ How many are your works, LORD!
   In wisdom you made them all;
   the earth is full of your creatures.