On May 11, the little viloet-green swallows returned to the greenway and stream behind our home in the Rocky Mountains.  There is really no adequate explanation for the joy and delight I get from watching their antics in the air – a rhythm of alternating flutters of acceleration and daring/darting swoops and glides.  They are much smaller than the barn and bank swallows, cuter and less graceful, like torpedo cigars with curved wings and a white band across the rump.  The analogy in flight might be a small propeller driven aerobatic craft as compared to the sleek Learjet look and performance of the barn swallow.

The swallows, of course, are feeding on tiny bugs in the air.  We never really notice bugs here, but they must be around, because the swallows come back every summer and are busy as can be, morning, noon and evening, swooping/sweeping out the ravine, transforming the air to absolute clarity.

Forgiveness is like that, I think.  Forgiveness cleans up the bugs.  Forgiveness seems to me the transformative act that moves us between the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life.

There is so much that cries for transformation in the experience of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  We all participate.  We all partake, whether we want to or not.  Each of us carries memories and scars of hurts and crimes of the heart, things we have done to strangers and enemies, friends and loved ones, that we can never call back or undo.  And we bear as painfully and heavily the injustices and hurts that others have cast off on us.

There are the passive acts: the circumstances beyond our control; the accidents of place and rank of birth; the onset of illness; environmental tragedies; the inevitable loss of loved ones, whether by age, illness, accident or even the screaming silent choice of suicide.

On the other side of the tree we encounter the insatiability of desire: the disappointment of pleasure that is less than we hoped; a relationship that somehow does not “meet my needs, too (with the unspoken implication that I am clearly fulfilling my end of this devil’s bargain);” the money that never quite buys all that we want; the status and recognition that we never fully achieve.

Forgiveness is not just our childhood concept of getting off the hook because we have said, “Sorry.”  Rather, forgiveness, like the feeding of the swallows, is a continual ongoing life process.  It involves, at least:

• taking in and accepting
• transforming
• relinquishing as something useful

I could go into a descriptive analogy with the digestive process of the swallow, but I’ll leave that to imagination, if you find it personally useful.

We cannot avoid our participation in, our daily consumption of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  It brings us – and we must embrace and consume, if we are to live and to grow – the full scope and continuum of our human experience.

But we can let go of both our horrid disgust and our choking grasp – our judgment and avoidance of or attachment to the inevitable fruit of our daily existence.  It is what it is, the fruit of human life.  If we manage it in the image of God way in which we were created, we can:

• accept it, take it in and embrace it as it comes
• allow it to be transformed for our growth and learning, our movement along the path to the Tree of Life
• release it back to the earth, transformed, for our own health and the health and nurture of all those we touch.

I have an acquaintance who reads this blog, a gifted healer who works with energy in this way, somehow sensing, drawing out, transforming and returning energy – energy that has accumulated as a negative build up, but is returned for healing.  It is an amazing gift and perhaps she will consent someday to write about it here.

But for you and me, let us be transformed, daily, by and in the Spirit, our Creator and Source.  Let us eat all that is set before us from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Let us accept it, present it for transformation and relinquish it for healing and nurture, finding that when we do, we are indeed flying with delight in the valley of the Tree of Life.

From Jackson Browne:

Don’t You Want to Be There

Don’t you want to be there, don’t you want to go?
Where the light is breaking and the cold clear winds blow
Don’t you want to be there in the golden glow

Don’t you want to be there, don’t you want to fly?
With your arms out, let a shout take you across the sky
Don’t you want to be there when the time’s gone by

Times there was love all around you
Times you were strong and alone
Times you believed love had found you
And you fell through time like a stone

And those you have wronged, you know
You need to let them know some way
And those who have wronged you, know
You’ll have to let them go someday

Don’t you want to be there?
Don’t you want to cry when you see how far
You’ve got to go to be where forgiveness rules
Instead of where you are

Don’t you want to be there, don’t you want to know?
Where the grace and simple truth of childhood go
Don’t you want to be there when the trumpets blow

Blow for those born into hunger
Blow for those lost ‘neath the train
Blow for those choking in anger
Blow for those driven insane

And those you have wronged, you know
You need to let them know some way
And those who have wronged you, know
You’ll have to let them go someday

Don’t you want to be there?
Don’t you want to see where the angels appear
Don’t you want to be where there’s strength and love
In the place of fear

Words and Music by Jackson Browne
(Swallow Turn Music, ASCAP)

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