Today is the day the swallows leave.
That’s the story, anyway.
In San Juan Capistrano, California, people say the cliff swallows fly away from the old mission every year on October 23. Then, every March 19, they come back.
October 23 is the day of St. John of Capistrano, the saint the mission town is named for. March 19 is the feast of St. Joseph. So the whole legend is stitched between two saints’ days. I love that.
Here is the honest part. Birds don’t read calendars. They come and go over days and weeks, not all on one morning. The people in that town know it. They keep the day anyway. A festival has been held there on March 19 since the early 1930s.
A day doesn’t have to be exact to be true. Sometimes it just gives us a place to say: someone is leaving, and someone will return.
The legend has a sweet beginning, too.
The story says the swallows first built their nests under the eaves of the shops in town. The shopkeepers knocked the nests down. So the birds went to the mission church and found shelter under its eaves instead.
It’s a legend. But look at what it says. One door closes. Another one opens.
Cliff swallows build their homes out of mud. Real, wet mud, carried in tiny mouthfuls and pressed against a wall under a roof. Mud and grass. Small, round, a little lumpy.
It is not fancy. It is home.
Then, when the cold comes, they leave. They head south, a very long way, to spend the winter in South America, in places like southern Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. And when spring comes, they find their way back to the same kinds of walls and the same kinds of eaves.
The writer of Psalm 84 watched the same kind of bird, long ago, and wrote this:
“Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at thy altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God.” (Psalm 84:3)
He was longing for God’s house. And he noticed that even a small bird finds a place to rest. If a swallow can find a home, so can we.
So here is a question for today.
Where is your place to come back to?
Maybe it’s a kitchen table. A pew. A porch light that someone always leaves on. A friend who says, “Come in, you look tired.”
And maybe you are the one who builds the nest for someone else. A little at a time. A pot of soup. A clean table. A chair pulled out. A simple “come in.”
You don’t need a mission church. You just need an eave, a little mud, and a willing heart.
If you are the one who is away right now, far from home and weary, that is allowed. Wanting home is not weakness. Even the swallows fly thousands of miles for it.
Today, look up at the eaves of the buildings you pass. See if anyone has built a home there.
Leaving is not the opposite of belonging. Sometimes it is how we find our way back.
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