I heard the owl call my name...

I Heard the Owl Call My Name

by Margaret Craven 

I heard the sound before I stepped out of the car--that distinctive call of the Great Horned Owl. By the way, those tuffs are not ears--but give the appearance of horns.  Walking down into the back yard--I heard it again--just like a dog barking.  I called out--and sooner rather than later--it answered me.  I had connected.  And it is precisely that connection with the natural world that we have lost and need to get back. 

The book, I Heard the Owl Call my Name, is the story of a young clergyman who is sent by his Bishop to a Native American tribe and village in the northwest. These are different times--because unknown by young cleric, the Bishop has the secret knowledge of the young man's terminal diagnosis. The Indians tell him he is going to die because the "owl has called your name."  In this painful saga, the cleric reconnects with the natural world in which the tragedy of the terminal illness is the hope of finding his place in the natural world. 

There is the unmistakable call of the owl that reconnects us with our natural world.  It is what we belong to by heritage--yet disavow with our dependence on technology.  Young Mark Brian dies more alive than when he arrived in the village. 

Of course, this takes me back to the call of the owl in my back yard.  There was the irresistible call of the owl which connected inside me to the world I really belong to.  William Faulkner had an abiding theme of connection with the natural world and the land.  Sever it and cease to be fully human and therefore alive.  I know I was richer, more alive for the encounter--which elicited from me the cry of an owl in return.