Nine Swans a Swimming
Wow! There they are! What a great gift after an inspiring morning of Lessons and Carols at Church. Our swan family, right by our dock. I could see “the gang” from the road at the end of our lagoon, and quickly made the corner, drove down the block to our driveway, and rushed into the house. Then out the back door with some bread, and down to the dock. This flock of sizeable birds is like family. The parents nest every year near our home, hatch five to seven little fluff balls around May, and then eventually bring the kids around to our dock for handouts. We have the privilege of watching them grow through the summer. Usually, they are gone by now. Then the next year, it is just the parents, hatching a new family.
This was a particular treat, seeing the past summer’s family in January. The children had grown tremendously. They were as large as their parents. And they competed with them for the food that I dropped on the water, trying to share it among nine aggressive, big birds. “Seven swans a-swimming” floated into my mind. The Twelve Days of Christmas! Let’s see, you start counting on the 25th, or is it the 26th, okay the 25th. That made today the ninth day of Christmas. Cool. On the ninth day of Christmas- nine swans a swimming. Yeah, but it’s supposed to be nine ladies dancing. Well, legend has it that the whole song is just a memory tool for Catechists from during the 16th-century religious wars in England. So if I want to do nine swans, I’ll do nine swans.
The nine in the song is said to represent the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22) Hmmm. The number works. But the nine swans fighting with each other and an even larger flock of attacking seagulls seem to be missing all nine of the fruits. But it did bring to mind the tremendous contrast between the frivolous fun that I was having with all of this and the horrible devastation in another waterfront area. Here I was casting bread on calm water, in the safety of my secure neighborhood, having playful thoughts about symbols of Christian love, while fellow humans around the Indian Ocean would fight more tenaciously than the swans for the morsels that I was doling out. 150,000 or more dead. Millions left homeless.
How blessed we are, and how greatly we are called to steward those blessings, exercise the fruits of the Holy Spirit, and share our abundance. But, it is human nature to grow to take for granted most of what we have. It is also human nature to even take for granted human suffering when it happens gradually. According to the UNAIDS “2004 Report on the global AIDS epidemic,” in Sub-Saharan Africa more than 6,000 people a day are dying from the disease. That works out to 2,200,000 in 2003. Yet our attention is grabbed by the tsunami while we hear little of the tragedy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Likewise, were it not for the Tsunami, we would probably have little knowledge of the people from the affected region. Funny how human nature works.
Nine swans a swimming becomes pretty important in that light. The nine fruits of the Holy Spirit are well represented by our Baptismal Covenant. When we fully live our Baptismal Covenant, the nine fruits are active in our lives. With the nine fruits active, everything that affects our fellow man becomes our concern- our stewardship. All that we have is given to us by God to do his work. It is helpful to have unexpected reminders of what that work is.
