Go Be a Swan

I got in and drove, not knowing where I was going. I only knew I needed this - a get-away and some quiet time. I felt the magnetic pull of the Black Hills, so I went that way. At a small picnic area I stopped and saw that a stream must flow through there. And there was a bridge. Perfect. I went and stood on the middle of the bridge and gazed at the little stream.. In the winter landscape the water made gurgling sounds as the stream still moved along. My mind began to clear. Fresh insight made its way in to my consciousness.

I love books, and I had brought a couple along. My books are mostly really heavy with content. I love the kind that stretch the mind and where you find sentences that demand to be underlined or highlighted in pink. I said a little prayer and opened this one to a random page. This book is huge, 518 pages to be exact. I haven’t read a lot in it, just a bit here and there. It’s that kind of book. This day, would you believe, the page I opened to told the story of the ugly duckling. Now, I have known this story ever since I was small. It was one of my grandma’s favorites (along with The Little Red Hen). As I started to read it I could see the pictures in the little book my grandma used to read me.

But today this story made sense in a completely new way. The ugly duckling hatched from a strange egg in a nest of duck eggs. He emerged a large, dark-colored, clumsy guy with a black bill. He was very mistreated - mocked at, made fun of, and was the object of many jokes. His “mother” was very gracious and kind and wanted to treat him like one of the bunch, but it was the others who made his life too miserable to stay. So one day he left. He wandered about, trying this and that. He looked for a new place to belong and someone to accept him and let him stay. At one point he came to a little cottage where there was a kind old woman. She welcomed him at first and was good to him. Then he flew around her kitchen one day and made an awful mess, and so he got put out. All this time as the summer had gone on he had kept growing larger and larger and larger. But in his mind he was still the ugly duckling that nobody wanted. Winter was coming, and he settled down by a pond in the tall grasses and slept. He awoke in the spring to the sun’s warmth and other birds calling to each other. He stood up and opened his great wings and stretched his long neck. On the pond he saw some beautiful swans. He watched in admiration and wondered if there was any possibility they might be okay with his company. He decided to try. So he swam out to meet them. They greeted him warmly and welcomed him. Two children at the shore of the pond exclaimed, “Oh look! There is a new swan! And this one is the most beautiful of all of them.” The “ugly duckling” bowed his head and caught a glimpse of himself in the water. He was the “most beautiful” swan. He had found his place at last.

Do you feel like the ugly duckling sometimes? Do you feel like the big ugly one in the nest or that you’ve been searching all summer for your crowd, and now it’s winter, and you have no idea what you’re going to do to survive? Or that you make a mess of things everywhere you go? And through it all you have no idea who you are or what you’re here for or even how you got where you are? Have you ever dared to imagine that perhaps you are actually a swan?… and that your time is yet coming?

That is the part that hit me the most. We could be a swan. I could really truly be a swan. But I just stand on the shore and admire the swans with dreamy eyes, imagining what it would be like to float gracefully on the surface of the water. To have those creamy white feathers and long slender necks. You see, the ugly duckling would have never known he was a swan if he would have stayed on the bank. He felt the pull to go to the swans, and when he dared to, a whole new world opened up.

The identity of the “ugly duckling” had to get laid to the side, put behind him. Can I do that? I think I hold on to old identities and it keeps me from seeing who I really am. I fail to see that the trials through that long summer of searching and cold winter of loneliness were for a purpose, and through it all I was growing and changing out gray feathers for white ones. My clumsiness was because I was getting used to a neck that was growing longer or feet getting bigger. I wasn’t going to find my forever family or my spot where I’d stay the rest of my life until I was ready for it. My mission or work wasn’t going to reveal itself until I was holding the frequency of who I would be in that mission.

Let’s not be afraid to be a swan, friends. Don’t be afraid to look down in that water and see what you see. It is a gift. A gift to share with the world.