Barn Swallow : The Canopy of Peace

This is a Barn Swallow. They’re tremendously challenging to photograph. They’re small, fast, and their flightpaths are completely unpredictable. The only way for me to get a photograph was to widen my lens, in essence to zoom out further away from the subject and then to ready myself to capture a single bird when the opportunity presented itself. Offering this one bird in isolation belies the glory of the flock, with dozens or more wheeling together overhead. Each individual constitutes part of a greater whole. They twitter as they dart, and the sight and sound of them roof out nearly everything else.

Now it is Sukkot. It is a Festival to revel in the fall harvest and to dwell in a fragile booth. Sukkot is a time to appreciate the bounty of the earth’s produce under the beauty of starry skies. We celebrate what we have while also acknowledging how subject we are to the vicissitudes of life. One of our liturgy’s most evocative images is the “sukkat sh’lomekha,” the canopy of peace. Under God’s sheltering wings, we can still see the world around us, but we are protected from the perils of the darkness. As we face threats - both real and imagined - the sukkat sh’lomekha infuses us with the assurance we need to fight back against anxiety. This is our fortress of wholeness.

A sukkah is an intentionally flimsy building. With three walls and gaps in the roof, it’s built to last only a few days. Our internal peace can be fleeting as well. A child’s fears of the night evolve into an adult’s fears of the day. But we rebuild our sukkah, each Festival, each year. Similarly, our security and our faith are buttressed each night we pray this plea for peace and wholeness. We shelter against the darkness of anxiety; we draw comfort from the constancy of the shining stars. Each Swallow is elusive and hard to capture, but flocking together they offer a sheltering oneness. So too, HaShem’s Oneness ensconces us in the safety of the sukkat sh’lomekha.