{"id":11696,"date":"2019-05-08T06:37:59","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T10:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/?p=11696"},"modified":"2019-05-08T06:38:01","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T10:38:01","slug":"the-moral-swift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/08\/the-moral-swift\/","title":{"rendered":"The Moral Swift"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Swifts, Chavarillo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/rickwright\/3984558643\/in\/photolist-21mZkUd-Dh3oqJ-bG9soK-851WQE-851X8L-84Moc9-84Mots-84MnU7-84Jf7D-84JgtF-84MnBJ-84Mn2q-756UsX-6wpi6W-6wjLqt-6woAUo-6woAZC-9GabhL\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/live.staticflickr.com\/2530\/3984558643_2c436962dd.jpg\" alt=\"Swifts, Chavarillo\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a> <script src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The <strong>common swifts<\/strong> are screaming all around as I look forward to meeting the group for <a href=\"https:\/\/ventbird.com\/content\/118\/E771C07B-5100-E811-80C1-0050569D3DBC\/Italy-Birds--Art-in-Tuscany?referrer=alltours&amp;p=1&amp;d=&amp;td=&amp;dt=&amp;lid=0&amp;gs=tuscany\">this year&#8217;s Tuscany tour<\/a>. Objectively, I suppose, it&#8217;s not a pleasant sound, like the screech of a thousand tiny tires on pavement, but it calls to mind so many wonderful spring and summer days from the past that I smile every time I hear it.<\/p>\n<p>Their black plumage, otherworldly keening, and intimidatingly powerful flight aroused dire suspicions in our ancestors, who gave the birds such names as &#8220;skeer devil,&#8221; &#8220;jack squealer,&#8221; and &#8220;devil screw.&#8221; The species was <a href=\"https:\/\/ia800903.us.archive.org\/11\/items\/dictionaryofengl00swanrich\/dictionaryofengl00swanrich.pdf\">known for its fearsome vengefulness<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A farmer, the owner of seventeen cows, is said to have shot seventeen Swifts in one day, and to have had every one of his cows die within seven weeks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>More sophisticated exegetes, however, found in the swift a range of moral exempla, positive and negative.<\/p>\n<p>With their tiny feet, swifts are limited to either flying or perching, with no capacity for walking or hopping in between. Thus they can be <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.it\/books?id=WuvFYkXpHP8C&amp;pg=PA261&amp;lpg=PA261&amp;dq=mundus+symbolicus+%22apus%22&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=4Pjl_pM-Gn&amp;sig=ACfU3U1GuhPy1KuaDK-JUn0dJqEn2FUo1Q&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiDwLrZx4viAhVL3KQKHX21CvYQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=mundus%20symbolicus%20%22apus%22&amp;f=false\">understood to represent<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>anyone who spurns holy moderation and prefers instead to do either everything or nothing, and so is always running to one extreme or the other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Such people are wont to rush to the goods of the world and the flesh, but to lie languid when it is time to praise God.<\/p>\n<p>Another behavior of swifts <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.it\/books?id=WuvFYkXpHP8C&amp;pg=PA261&amp;lpg=PA261&amp;dq=mundus+symbolicus+%22apus%22&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=4Pjl_pM-Gn&amp;sig=ACfU3U1GuhPy1KuaDK-JUn0dJqEn2FUo1Q&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiDwLrZx4viAhVL3KQKHX21CvYQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=mundus%20symbolicus%20%22apus%22&amp;f=false\">leads us in a different direction<\/a>, though.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Swifts nest in jagged crevices among rocks&#8230;. In the same way, too, as Jerome tells us, the Virgin Mary delivered her child in a cave in the rocks. And so also the soul given over to divine contemplation builds its own nest in caves in the rock and in chinks in the wall &#8212; that is to say, in the sacred wounds of Christ as he hung on the cross.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s rarely simple when we think about birds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The common swifts are screaming all around as I look forward to meeting the group for this year&#8217;s Tuscany tour. Objectively, I suppose, it&#8217;s not a pleasant sound, like the screech of a thousand tiny tires on pavement, but it calls to mind so many wonderful spring and summer days from the past that I &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/08\/the-moral-swift\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Moral Swift&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11696"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11696"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11698,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11696\/revisions\/11698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/birdaz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}