Nature Meditation — October

It looks so easy to be a swan. Just float gracefully on the blue water looking beautiful and majestic. (Of course, we don’t see the footwork!)

Maybe we do a lot of footwork and feel we don’t see such beautiful results. A good and beautiful life takes a lot of discerning, an interior process of deciding what I am made for, called to be and do. I think of it as having to do with a deep inner sense of taste given by my Maker.

In the Hindu tradition, the swan is a symbol or model of discernment. This tradition holds that the swan, offered a mixture of milk and water, will drink only the milk, separating it out by a mystical instinct. Indeed, discernment is called ‘the science of the water and the milk.’ I have read that the same Sanskrit word ‘hans’ is used both for ‘swan’ and for ‘soul.’

One evening I was reading reflectively about this mythical swan. I was standing in the middle of my room with my radio playing softly in the background, thinking how sensitive a creature it was. All at once I became aware that the music coming from the radio was “The Swan” by Camille Saint-Saen. I fell to my knees and remained so until the music ended. I was utterly silenced and retired in this state of consolation.

Every swan reminds me!

Sr. Mary Alban Bouchard

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